Toyota Vios - 20K Service Experience

Today, I'm off from work (again) due to the "short work week" directive again. Best take the opportunity to send my wife's Vios in for servicing at the service center at Cheng.

Made the appointment by phone for today at 10.00am. Morning seems to be the most popular choice for people to send in their cars for servicing, as the customer lounge was "full" at least until 11.00am. Now, I clarify on the term "full". Toyota, to their credit, made their customer waiting lounge rather spacious, which was a boost to the comfort of their waiting customers. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of empty space (and therefore, lack of chairs). I stood by the magazine rack for a good one hour plus, until there were seats vacant.

For the 20K service today, it took roughly 2.5 hours, with my car finally ready at 1.30pm. Could have been faster if I had opted to forgo the wash and wheel alignment.

From the look of things, labour cost amounts to 50% of the total service charges. Looks like wheel balancing and alignment costs are also quite high. Labour cost to service my Honda Civic appears to be cheaper (example the 15K service labour cost was only ~RM60).

Well, at least we don't travel around so much, so servicing is only required every 4~5 months....

My first attempt at Digital Infrared Photography

After reading about this in various sources on the Internet and web forums, I finally managed to get my hands on a Hoya R72 IR filter. Thus begins my experimentation into the realm of Infrared photography!

I got mine from the online store, Shashinki. Have made several purchases from them over the past couple of years, so I am happy with their service and also can vouch for their reliability.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, do read up an excellent resource on this matter at Wikipedia.

Basically, the theory is that the CCD / CMOS sensor in a DSLR is sensitive to wavelengths of light exceeding our normal human scope of vision. Nowadays, manufacturers put IR blocking filters in front of their sensor chips to filter out the IR light (usually > 600-700 nanometer wavelength). This filter seems to get better with each successive generation of camera, as my D70 is much more sensitive than my D200.

Well, my first experimental shot made on the D200 was a disaster - had to crank up the ISO to 3200 and expose to 30 seconds to get some dark, under-exposed and noisy image. When I switched over to my D70, initially I got a totally white image, due to using the same settings as my D200. Only when I throttled down on the parameters did I start to get my pseudo-colored IR images. Heh, heh, heh...!

Now, left on auto white balance, the images tend to take on a reddish cast. Taking a cue from some online advice, I preset the white balance by pointing my camera at a green bush. Note that I still had to dial in around - 1 EV to prevent the burnt out highlights.

I took off late one morning, when the sun was already high in the sky. Usually avoided by photographers as the angle of sunlight would cast ugly shadows, I chose to go out during this time as this meant there was an ample amount of light (especially infrared light) to light the scene.

I stopped first at the Bukit Beruang hill, a popular place for exercising (especially useful for training to climb Mt Kinabalu). Then went to the man-made lake / recreation park at Taman Tasik Utama. Finally on my way home, stopped by for a snap of the MITC mosque.

Upon getting home, I fired up GIMP and did some basic post processing. Unfortunately, I discovered that my lens of choice (Tamron 17-50 F2.8) was prone to what was known as "hot spot" in the center of the frame, leading to some overexposure and color shift in the central circular area. Nothing much could be done, so I take this as a lesson to try out the lens first before going off ona shooting spree.

My images were noisy, as I set my camera ISO to 1600 - didn't have a tripod, so hand-held shots would have been blurred due to camera shake.

Well, I will take the next step to send my D70 for modification to remove the IR blocking filter and replace it with an IR pass filter. With this, my D70 will be dedicated for IR, leaving my other DSLR's for normal photography.

Hope to post more photos once the modifications are done. Meanwhile, view some of my photos below and the rest in my gallery over HERE.


Scene from a bush near the top of Bukit Beruang, that was the source for my preset white balance....



Entrance to the man-made lake / recreation park at Taman Tasik Utama



View of the lake, with slightly different hue during post-processing



Mosque at MITC, shot out of my car window (after winding down, of course)

When things change - look at yourself first

The saying goes - "For things to change, I must change first". When put in another context, when things change, it could be due to something that we changed first.

My standard flow for blogging is as follows:-

1. Compose and post blog from my Multiply site
2. Cross post from Multiply to Blogspot
3. Edit / touch up exported Blogspot post
4. Automatically set up Facebook to import from Blogspot to Notes

I posted on my Blog earlier this month as normal. However, after a lapse of nearly a month, I found that my last two posts made yesterday did not make it to Blogspot after 24 hours.

Hmm, could Multiply have changed something? Or maybe Blogspot? These questions that I ask myself reveal an in-built fear of change that usually comes with no warning or indication (I've had some nasty experiences in life on these lines).

After dwelling on this issue overnight, I finally remembered - I could have changed my Blogspot login password, but forgot to change the cross-posting settings in Multiply. With the old password, there was no way Multiply could complete the automated login to Blogspot.

Well, I have changed the settings and hopefully, this post will appear at my Blogspot site as well as my Facebook profile. Will know for sure shortly once I click on "Save & Publish"...!

Note to self (2 hours later) : Hmm, doesn't seem to solve the problem. Will try again later....

Another note to self : Re-entered Blogspot details in Multiply and now it seems to work! Hmm, this looks to be a sign - must post more regularly....!

Corporate policy - no Facebook

I have nothing against Facebook, the famous and popular social-networking site (quite similar to Multiply) that has grown exponentially popular, with no sign of slowing down! So popular, in fact, that some employers are putting Facebook on their Firewall's block list. I guess this is to prevent employees from getting too distracted with social-networking until they forget the main reason why they clocked in for work....

For more information on Facebook, check out their Wikipedia entry here (which I doubt would be blocked by anyone except for the most draconian and vile IT).

As for me, I'm a happy Facebook user, as I have managed to renew some long-lost links with my old schoolmates (and by old I mean from Primary school some 20 years ago). Somehow, the pages have a more clean and standardized look (unlike Myspace and Friendster, where one will quickly learn that the power to create does not always yield works of art!). This is good, as it looks more mature than a psychedelic page with blinking text, animated GIF's and Flash that makes the Vegas Strip look like a page out of the Business Times!

Well, we have to be thankful we can even access the Internet at work. I remember from my first company, we didn't even have dedicated PC's, so we had our desks (no cubicles) in the middle of the office room, and the PC's were all lined up against the wall (like in a Cybercafe) with all of them networked to one inkjet printer. Sigh, I've come such a long way since then....

E-Filing tax returns for 2008

Phew, just managed to get through! Me, being an Average Joe like 98% of the general Malaysian population, has this unexplained, built-in fear of filing tax returns. I read online at www.thestar.com.my that the number of people rushing to file their returns before the deadline (end of April) has increased by more than 5 times! Read it here.

As expected, the website crawled at a snail's pace. It took minutes to get from one page to the next.

Well, finally done. So no more fear of taxes until next year!

Link to e-filing site : https://spsd.hasil.gov.my/PKI/e/mainpage.html

Back too late.... :(

Tsk. The Internet is slow again tonight. But I'm disappointed that by the time I'm back from work, my little girl is already asleep on the bed.

That's the tricky part when working with a multi-national company with contacts in Europe and US - at any given time, it'll be day for you and someone else, so you'll frequently have to come in early for telephone conferences with someone in the States, and stay back well into the evening for a session with someone in Europe.

Well, nothing in life comes easy - sometimes, sacrifices are unavoidable. Hard to be a good papa....