New Route to Work 2

Just tried taking the same route back.

The walk from the Circle line platform to the Northbound NS platform is so much further (more legwork).

Better to take the NS/EW combi instead.

But that would mean sacrificing 3G access on the way home.

New Route to work?

I chanced upon a friend when I was taking the MRT yesterday and she recommended me to take the Circle-NE line combi instead as it would be faster.

I wasn't so sure if it would since it meant changing twice (Bishan and Serangoon) instead of the normal switch at Raffles Place. But I was curious to find out if it actually would be.

So I tried it today.

From my usual door on the NS line, the walk to the Circle platform was probably less than 100 steps. Even during peak hour at 8am, the Circle train was astonishingly empty and I could get a seat with plenty of empty ones around me.

But it was a different matter at the Serangoon station though. Having boarded the Circle train at the last train carriage's door, it meant walking the entire train length to take the escalator to travel in the direction of the NE platform. Thankfully, the Circle line, being a medium capacity transport, has only 3 cars and not the full 6 car lengths like the NS/EW/NE ones. Even though escalators were available liberally en route, it was much further on foot compared to the switch at Raffles.

The NE, now more established and passing through the "developing" towns of Punggol, Sengkang and Potong Pasir, is visibly more congested compared to the Circle at this point in time.

Timing-wise, it seems quicker in reaching my station as the ride is far more pleasant (I typed this entry during the ride) compared to the one on the NS/EW line. I will reserve judgment on whether it is quicker during normal working days.

Financially, it costs the same as I exit from the same station.

A bonus of switching to this route is that I'd be able to have continuous 3G coverage throughout my trip compared to the paltry GSM one that the NS/EW offers, which is quite tempting.

Will try it again at a more 'realistic' time as I'd be on leave during this holiday season.

Stay tuned ;)

Converting Videos with FFMPEG

Writing this quick link to help my not-so-techie sister to convert her holiday movies into a format that most players (and online webshare sites):

1. Download the FFMPEG daily build - link here

2. Unzip FFMPEG (you'll need to download the 7-Zip software to open the .7z file - link here)

3. After unzipping the zipped file, the only file that is important is the ffmpeg.exe to convert the media files into the format that you want. Locate that file.

4. For convenience, create a temp directory eg. C:\ffmpeg and copy the ffmpeg.exe into it

5. Copy the file/s (you can use Windows Explorer) that you want to convert into the same temp directory that was created for the ffmpeg.exe file. In this instance, I'm assuming the media file name is original.avi.

6. Going into Windows DOS prompt - in XP, click on Start, Run and type "cmd" without the brackets. I think it's somewhat the same in Vista.

7. At the DOS prompt, type "cd\ffmpeg". If this command fails, type "c:" first followed by the "cd\ffmpeg" command

7. To convert the original.avi file to converted.mp4 (mp4 format), type in the command below:

ffmpeg -i original.avi -sameq -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac -ab 192k converted.mp4

8. Press Enter and Wait for conversion to complete. The converted file converted.mp4 will reside in the same temp directory as ffmpeg.exe and original.avi

9. Enjoy the converted video ;)

For those reading this and wish to have greater control on the output (eg. reduce size, cropping to 4:3 format, add subtitles, obtain the audio track etc), read the FFMPEG documentation for more details.

Standing at the Crossroads

For those who'd been reading my FB posts, I've been pondering whether I should take up photography again. I used to love it during my younger days (circa 1990).

My dad bought a camera (manual focus, not sure what brand it was though - Panda?) and I feel in love with it quickly. I proceeded to get a Canon EOS 700 and a 630 subsequently during JC. Having spent most of my allowances on photo equipment and film processing during my JC days, I'm hesitant to go down this path again.

Photography was an expensive hobby then. A roll of 36s costs abt $5-7 with prints and processing fees costing abt $12-15 per roll. I think abt $100 went out each time I went out shooting. Assuming if I'd invested that money since 1990, I'd have a tidy sum now.

It's probably not as expensive as before (though I think digital ones have zero resale value compared to the film types - I remembered want to get a Nikon FM2 then), but digitals would require quite a fair amount of house-keeping (storage in a single drive folder? Not me) and filing.

For those who didn't know, I was a photographer during my NS days - following VIPs, taking photos, sending them for processing etc. took a lot of the passion away. Even using a Nikon F4s (the top of the line circa 1993 - probably costs around $4k+ then) didn't sustain that interest for long.

Maybe it was an overdose of taking too many pictures in too short a timespan. I swore off SLRs and "serious" photography since then. The only camera that I'd owned since was a Canon S40 that took decent pictures but it was misplaced (don't ask).

It was only after Caeden was born, we bought the Olympus mju as we thought having a waterproof camera would serve us well as our boy loved water. And it did.

Last Friday, Ivy and I had the opportunity to catch Caeden's Christmas concert at his school. We tried using the Olympus. With a 3x zoom and poor ISO sensitivity, the pics that came out were HORRIBLE.

With two kids (cute ones I might say), it would be a terrible shame not to capture precious moments that we spend together.

The Canon SX20 is calling out to me...