+ Gadgets | My Investment

Singapore Expo Convention Centre

Went to the last computer expo for the year yesterday.

A four-day event Sitex 2005 will end today from Thu, 24 November 2005 at the Singapore Expo Hall 4 & 5, situated in Upper Changi Road East, a 10 minutes cab ride from our home.

Went out shopping together after lunch and got everything we need for my wife's Chic Couture Christmas Bazaar decorations in one trip. Onward we went to the Expo by train from Bugis Junction MRT.

My wife, too tired to go along, parted at the Tanah Merah MRT Interchange while my son and I went together to fulfil my promise to him.

We promised to get X-box games if he did well in his exams, but will get something special if he was to be top 10 in his class. He did the latter.

Wonderful achievement! But ouch! My pocket begins to hurt.

Already set his mind to a Sony Playstation Portable or PSP which would cost me S$543.00. I told him to check out the all-in-one Camcorder to consider too before making up his mind.

I have been meaning to get my hands on the all-in-one Digital Camera/ Camcorder/ MP3 Player / WebCam/ Voice Recorder/ Portable Harddrive and whatever they can squeeze technology into it gadget.

The camera function is good too, higher pixel resolution at 5M and enhanced up to 11M. This can last almost forever as you would not want to always print a photo larger than A4, let alone A3.

Like having an i-Pod and an i-Pod Video in one, plus more stuff in one palm-sized product.

The Digilife DDV-M1 is so far the best all-in-one gadget for him. He would benefit from using it more than a PSP.

He could use it for all occasions, but most importantly he can use it for school projects.

Making videos, taking pictures on excursions and save large files into it to transfer to and from school and home, like his recent Drug Prevention video project.

Fortunately we have a protable USB harddisk that he was able to save the completed 20Mbytes project in it to be transferred to school. Several Thumb-Drives would be needed and still just too small to contain that large video.

This s far better than PSP with each game costing S$80.00 and you would continuously have to fork out from time to time for new games afterwards, else what is the point of buying it and not playing on it after a while when he completes all level.

Like I predicted, upon viewing and got his hands on it, he changed his mind for this great gadget.

Usual price at S$ 699.00, the price it now at S$399.00 with additional li-ion battery, a portable extended speakers compatible with i-Pods and a mini tripod worth S$100.00 as free gift.

An additional S$96.00 for a fast speed 1GB SD Card for his video and photo storages. Good bargain, I think.

Now, tons of creative things and ideas are open to him to conceive and create. His imagination will be his limit. I am so happy for him.

Far from it forme to get something like this at the age of 10. He is very fortunate. We are very fortunate to be able to afford somethinglike this to our child. Thanks to You Allah for Your blessings.

And Danish, please take care of it. Don't drop it. It costs me a bomb. Ouch! My pocket hurts, but I wish to think of this as an investment.

+ Tornado | Little Singapore

tornado off Jurong Island

Received an email from a friend and was surprised to see something that is very rare to hit our Island.

Or at least not recorded or highlighted enough that people like me are oblivious to such natural phenomenon to hit our shores.

The massive earth quakes that created the giant waves that hit and devastated parts of Asia's coastal areas were "almost" felt in certain parts of Singapore.

Other than that, our island is very shielded from natural disasters with Malaysia and Indonesia buffering and protecting it from coming to our shores.

Not being near the fault lines is a blessing from the Almighty.

Not sure who took the photos but this is the first "large enough" tornado I have ever seen hitting our shores.

It was taken off Jurong Island.

With the tornado touching the sea and coming towards land.

It broke its contact off the sea once near land and dissipated into thin air.

The only time I saw such natural phenomenon was when we were having a family picnic at Changi Beach Park, but it was puny and disappeared before it ever could gather enough strength to be visible enough.

The second one was sighted by my son first while we were on a plane, barely 30 minutes after take-off enroute to Mauritius last year.

The sight was awesome. A dark funnel from a dark grey swirly cloud. Excited but at the same time scary.

These are definitely nothing as compared to the photos and scenes seen on National Geographics, especially in the open planes in the US.

From the same friend, the email received with photos of the tornado in the US before Hurricane Katrina.

Not sure if this description of the photo is correct, but WOW!

The sight reminds you that God is the ultimate who can move heaven and earth at His will.

+ Click | Stormy Night

Midnight and the storm was approaching

Took leave for several days in between the Deepavali and Hari Raya holidays to do the last few clean-ups at home for the Hari Raya celebrations.

It had been raining on and off the past few weeks and was no different tonight, except the louder than usual thunder and were more frequent too.

Past midnight I could not get to sleep. Maybe because I was over-worked from all that spring-cleaning, but the lightnings and roaring thunders definitely distracted me from staying in bed.

It had not rained still but the continuous lightning and thunder seemed to invite me to take pictures of it. Well, I took out my trusted Panasonic FZ10 and started stalking the lightnings from my living room window.

Took many shots, trying to anticipate the lightning as it appeared, but with my no-knowledge of how I should set the camera for this situation, it did not give me the good enough pictures like the ones I had seen before from posters off of a skyline.

Several was also taken from my bedroom window, but it looked more like dawn than what I had hoped to capture.

Need alot of reading up on camera settings and alot of practise to capture lightning photos, but most importantly only when a stormy night like this comes.