Working under pressure

^ Ever felt pressured like this before? Your first test?

The Prime Minister’s yatch

I got this email from a friend. It has a cache of pictures of a beautiful yatch (see pictures below) that supposedly belongs to our Prime Minister.

However the email is not meant as a compliment but as a complaint that the Prime Minister can spend 6 million on a boat which (they claim) could be spent better on nation building projects.

However I disagree on that point. Just imagine if you are a very successful leader living the life of your dreams with your well thought out planning since you were young. Now imagine if the business you started when you were young are paying you bundles of money. What is a little money spent on pampering yourself?

Don’t mention the fact that he’s our Prime Minister. I see A LOT of millionairs spending MORE THAN 6 million on houses, yatches and personal projects (building rockets anyone?) so who’s to dictate that he cannot own his own yatch? Pure bullshit I tell you. Some people just like to cari pasal. What’s more he’s only using his own money so what’s wrong with that?

Anyway if I have 6 million to spend, I’d build a yatch too.

Anyway let’s forget the argument and enjoy the pictures below. At least the PM has good taste.

Pixart Photo Book

I recently enlisted the services of Pixart to create a book for me. Not those books you buy at MPH but a very personal photo book.

Think of a hard cover glossy coffee table magazine, which is what it is anyway.

Unlike other services where you need to enlist a professional to help you design all your layouts and then personally approach a publisher to get it printed in bulk (they don’t do a single book mind you), Pixart cuts through all that by equipping you with a propriety software where you design you book layout via simple drag and drop.

^ The Photobook designer software.

Creating the PhotoBook

Depending on the type of Photobook you are designing (mine was the default 12 pages 24 fronts book), you get to play around designing the book using extra layouts available for download or with your own effects such as sepia or drop shadows.

The software includes an easy to follow 4 step process to the finalised product.

^ Follow these and you’ll get your book sent for printing in no time!

^ The first step involves importing all your high res pictures into their bin. You can select as many pictures as you want but they need to be of high quality else it will come out blurred – which is better than pixalated. Pixart got this covered.

^ The second step lets you drag and drop those pictures into your fanciful layouts. From here you can use your own templates or apply extra templates available for download at the Pixart site.

^ The third step involves creating the album cover via the same drag and drop action in Step 2. However you are limited to 5 pictures when designing a PhotoBook. Those 5 pictures will form a band around the book from the front to the back.

^ Finally the forth step involves previewing your book before presenting you with a form for particulars. You fill in your mailing address, name and IC number while comfirming the number of pages you wanted printed (generated). The form then lets you know how much it will cost. Once everything is comfirmed, cliking on upload will upload all this data to Pixart’s server. Then a webpage will show (assuming you are online using broadband) asking for payment options (read “Payment” below). Settle everything and you’ll get an email comfirmation.

Following all the easy steps above is fast and simple. In my own experience, it all takes less than an hour from download of their software to final upload. It’s fast because once you have the pictures positioned the way you want it, it’s easy to visualise if you wanted them that way based on their preview. If it’s still not good enough, drag them around again!

Payment

Now, on the most important aspect of the entire project. The cost!

For my standard 12 pages, 24 printed sides Pocket Photo Book, it’s a flat rate of RM50. If your design exceeds 12 pages, then each page (2 printed sides) costs and extra RM1.50. Ok what!

Then as for delivery charges, it’s only RM 6 to anywhere in Peninsula Malaysia while its RM 9 to Sabah and Sarawak. For the rest of the world (they do deliver worldwide), CLICK HERE.

Thus for my Pocket PhotoBook, total cost = RM56

For more infomation, read up on Pixart’s FAQ which helped me a lot.

Following that I must give my thanks to Dominic of Pixart Customer Service & Marketing Manager. believe I gave him a slight headache when I bugged call several times asking for infomation such as paying through ATM (no credit card) as well as requested that he start work on my book before receiving the proof of payment which I believe is against company rule but he did it for me instead. Many many thanks for the friendly service as well as personally taking care of my project.

Delivery

This is the part where I felt why Pixart will be very successful in the future. The speed which I got my PhotoBook delivered truly is fantastic!

I believe I uploaded the file on Monday. Called him on Tuesday to request start work pending payment. Then I got my book the next Monday. Bear in mind that they only work from Mon to Fri so that means I got my book just 1 week later!

The book came via Pos Laju and is well packed.

^ The package came in a bubblewrap lined envelope with the black box. The Photobook is again inside another bubblewrap bag INSIDE the block box. Talk about paranoia, but I like that!

The Photobook itself…

Below are 2 pictures of the front and back of the Photo Book. I cannot show the content because the book itself is a birthday present to my friend Jeannie (and it wouldn’t be so nice to have your favorite gift blogged all over the net right?).

The insides starts off with black paper backing the 12 pages I ordered. The pages themselves are glossy (with matte an option).

^ Notice that the cover itself is also matte to the touch. The pictures themselves reach around the back of the cover and continues under the black paper backing to give an unbroken line.

Conclusion

I need to enphasise that this blog entry is not paid nor is requested by Pixart or anyone else. I just felt that it’s a wonderful service they’re providing and thus I’m blogging it for everyone to give it a try.

As for the PhotoBook itself, it’s wonderful to be able to hold it in your hand knowing you created it every step of the way and yet, didn’t sweat a drop. The quality of the book is very solid. A hard cover front, stitch bound pages, semi gloss acid-free paper as well as photo quality printing. It’s just the same as your parent’s wedding album. Just that solidly built. I might add that for the Pocket Photobook, the hardcover is matte instead of glossy.

I hate websites that does the navigation for me

After much surfing the net, I’ve recently noticed that some web developers are now very keen on coding their sites to perform automated navigation.

I’ve seen photo galleries that jumps to the next HALFWAY WHILE I’M READING IT. I’ve also seen websites that jumps to some other pages when I hover my mouse over their banner.. and none of them had a degree in psychology.

Who says they know what I’m thinking or where I want to go? Who even suggest that I want to continue to their other pages anyway.

No doubt that some of the sites contain very good contents. But please for the sake of everyone. Stop it!

Case Study…

There’s this site that lists down the top 10 buildings engineers deserve to be named as the New 10 wonders of the world. [Site Address]

It’s wonderfully interesting to read up on their views and analysis.

BUT…

… for the life of me I don’t understand why they need to auto forward me to the next picture WHILE RESIZING MY WINDOW AT THE SAME TIME!

Lots of shouting but I’m really frustrated at this.

They’re doing automated navigation as if they know when I want to advance to the next picture.

Stop being such a wise guy and let me handle that. I DON’T FIND THAT VERY ‘INTELLIGENT’ THAT YOUR SITE HAS A ‘GHOST’ RUNNING THE SHOW!

Trash ATI drivers, use Omega instead

Just today I downloaded a 1080p 10Mbps clip from Stage 6 (BBC Motion Gallery) and tried it on my laptop. To my dismay not only was it stuttering but when I checked my processor’s activity graph only one of my CPU was running at max while the rest was actually idling away!

I passed the same video to a friend of mine running ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 with only 128MB graphic RAM (a Dell) and the video was superb. Clearly my graphic component was the issue. However on the hardware front I was running a X1600 with 512 of memory and thus it MUST be my drivers.

On a side note: I’ve never stressed my machine to the max ever since I brought it so this was a surprise to me. I always thought the supplied ATI (latest version) would be sufficient in this world of dual cores. However it’s very dissapointing to note that this is not the fact. ATI’s driver is actually under utilising my CPU!

So out of desparation I seek out ATI.com again hoping to look through their FAQ when I chanced upon an external link to OmageDrivers.net within the ATI website itself! (This speak tons on their own bundled drivers).

What I found at Omega is truly eye opening. They managed to supply us poor users with a universal driver compatible with all, again, ALL Radeon graphic cards with just 1 driver set (version 7.1 for those who want to know). Not only that but the bundled ATI Control Panel (not related with ATI’s own Catalyst Control Center) provides tons of other settings that CCC does not provide.

Leaving everything at default I replayed the same video and OMG it was sweet! Not only does it look better but it’s buttery smooth!

Launching my Oblivion also showed a VERY dramatic improvement on the graphics side. Instead of running it at 1024×768 now I can run it widescreen at my native resolution (1280×800). No more croppings! Yay!

So the moral of the story is buy the graphic card, then trash the OEM drivers and install Omega’s instead. Omega can quote me for all they want. I’m a die hard believer that 3rd party drivers CAN BE BETTER than factory presets. No doubt about it.

Meanwhile let me finish my gallery of HD content in peace. I’m addicted to High Defination :þ