Lately, we found a smaller version of something that we need to use every day.  It is a T-shirt, in a compressed form!  We think it’s a pretty good idea for travelling because it is light and easy to be carried around.

In order to expand the compressed T-shirt, fill a pail of water and soak it in.  It will be expanded in a matter of minutes.  It is almost like magic.  I wonder how they compressed it in the first place and how much it costs if someone were to buy it.  We don’t know about the price for this one because it was a gift.

When it is fully expanded, it becomes a normal T-shirt and ready to be hung to dry.  Last but not least, it is ready to be worn too!  However, if you intend to bring a compressed T-shirt along with you when you go on a holiday, it is suggested that you bring some extra clothings because you need to wait for them to dry before you can wear them!

Do you have an old printer which uses parallel port but you need to connect it to your new notebook which doesn’t have a parallel port but USB ports? Here are two solutions.

First, if you are lucky, most of the printers actually have a standard 36-pin Centronics parallel port on the circuit board, what you need to do is just to get a very common USB to Parallel printer cable (USB to C36 Parallel Male) and replace the old cable; it may work on most printers.

Second, here comes the problem if the port at the printer is a 36-pin mini Centronics parallel port. A standard USB to Parallel printer cable won’t help. You cannot connect it because the port on the printer is smaller. This usually happens on HP (Hewlett Packard) old printer. I have encountered HP LaserJet 1100 which has this problem.

I went to a shop selling HP products looking for mini Centronics cable, the boss gave me six words, “Don’t waste money, it won’t work!” He also suggested me to get a new printer. How am I going to tell my customer? I continued to look for other solutions and understand that the mini Centronics port is uncommon. My suppliers also told me there is no solution. I tried my luck at a computer shop which I seldom step my foot into because the IT parts are very expensive there, but I have got a solution. There is no need to waste time to order the mini Centronics cable /adapter and wait for it to arrive. I have got a “common-and-not-difficult-to-find-thing” to solve the problem.

The easiest solution is to get a USB to 25-pin Parallel female cable (USB to DB25F). DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR OLD CABLE, but join the old cable and the new cable together. I have tested it and it works successfully on HP LaserJet 1100. This method makes the printer cable longer.

There are many other solutions such as using a Centronics to mini Centronics adapter, but you may not find them in the market easily, as I said earlier that the mini Centronics port is not common. I guess only the older HP printers were using it. From what I read from forums, the printer may fail to work if it is using this type of adapter.

If you have tried all possible solutions but your printer is still not working because of driver problems or other issues, I suggest you to get a new printer with USB port. Hehe… :p

It has been a while we did not write about the natural world. Today, I will show you a sprouted sweet potato. It has leaves in red before it turns green.

Look at the details on the small red leaves. That is the effect I want from the camera. The important thing that needs to be taken care is focusing. Anyway, I was still using auto focus. I should use the smallest possible aperture, but the lighting disallowed it.

If I am not mistaken, the potato sprout is poisonous but the sweet potato leaves are edible. [Read this sentence carefully] hehe…

It not easy to do manual focusing on my camera, because I need to press the + and - button instead of turning the focusing ring. Another thing is that I only have a small screen to preview the focused part, and it was on a small 2″ LCD display. The focused part is zoomed but the preview has a lot of noise (rainbow colours dots) which prevent me to focus to the object properly.

I wonder I should get my dream camera (a high zoom power semi-pro compact camera) or a DSLR. The DSLR for beginner is cheaper than my dream camera, how can this happen?

Finally, sweet potato is my favourite. Hehe… We like sweet potato soup.

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Valentines Updates

It tooks us 30 minutes to get through a street which normally only takes less than 5 minutes. I am not sure it’s because of the people selling flowers beside or even on the street along waterfront Kuching; or there are too many couples coming out to the street and caused the serious traffic jam.

We have presents, a normal dinner but no special celebration. May be we were too old for that. For us, everyday is our valentines. :d :d :d

We have an important task where I needed to travel to Sibu on last Thursday and the task was accomplished yesterday (Saturday noon). That’s why you didn’t see any update on this site for a few days because I have not enough sleep. I have been charging my body’s battery and it is fully charged today.

It was a task that require my focused mind and high concentration. I travelled from Kucing to Sibu on an express boat through rivers and sea. Not as usual, I didn’t bring my camera, first because I wanted to get my mind focused throughout the journey where I prayed and think of the procedures to get things done, secondly I had no mood to take photos, and thirdly I know I won’t have enough time to take photos. I like photography but I try to control myself not to do it. Lukily my friend go along with me, Wilson has brought his camera. I hope I can see some photos from him.

SiewPeng did not followed me, she sent me to meet Wilson, and another friend, Vincent sent us to the Express Boat Terminal. Wilson and I started our journey on the river at 8:30am. It took us 5 hours to reach Sibu. There were local people, and some AngMo (foreigners) were also on board with us. I did not take any breakfast because I was afraid of the sea-sickness that would make me vomit.

First hour, we sat on an open area where we could look at the river and felt the wind. The river was calmer than what I expected. Wilson and I was chatting with each other, and we saw many things both sides along the river. I started to pray. Suddenly the boat stopped for a while, and a staff checked the boat engine for about 30 seconds and continued the journey.

Second hour, I was still sitting on the left side of the boat facing the river, kept on praying, and the express boat went out the estaury and reached the South China Sea. At a place there is a sudden change of sea colour and from there the waves were getting fierce. Sometimes there was a small amount of sea water splashed onto my face, and sometimes I saw some fish jumping out of the sea surface, like saying hello to me. There were getting less and less people at the open area because the boat was moving up and down, some of them had gone into the VIP seat area. I kept on looking at the sea although there was nothing to see except the waves. I found that this way will reduce the dizziness caused by sea-sickness. Keep praying…

Third hour, Wilson and I also went into the VIP seat area. There was a TV playing a horror movie. I started to lose my concentration on my prayer. I watched the movie for a while, closed my eyes for a while and prayed for a while. I first experience dizziness after I read SMS on my mobile phone. We discovered that there were coverage on the sea/river. After a short while, the boat stopped at Tanjung Malim Tanjung Manis (which I told SiewPeng wrongly). Although it says it is an express boat, but it stopped halfway. Not a big problem, after about 2 minutes, the boat was heading to Sarikei. From now on, the waves were getting smaller and smaller because it came back from South China Sea and went into the Rajang River. Wilson’s brother got onto the boat at Tanjung Manis and would get down the at Sarikei. I asked why he didn’t travel by car, he said that Tanjung Manis is not reachable by car. You can see now how good it is the transportation system in Sarawak. :p

Fouth hour, I was doing the same things, the boat stopped at Sarikei. We say good bye to Wilson’s brother.

Fifth hour, this is the longest hour, the boat moved slowly. I saw many other boats and ships in the river. Some were transporting timbers, some were carrying sand, big machines and goods containers. I saw many ports that allow boats to stop, but our express boat didn’t stop. It’s a long long way along the longest river in Malaysia, the Rajang River. I saw our express boat driver turning the steering left and right with a GPS system in front of him, how ever I did not feel that the boat was turning to any direction, but only went forward in a straight line. I was hungry and really hope the boat could reach the destination ASAP. Finally we reached Sibu at 1:30pm.

We have our lunch at about 2pm, and started doing what we should do at 2:30pm. At about 4:30pm, we were heading back to Kuching and and reach at about 10:30pm.

On that day, I have traveled 5 hours on the water, 5.5 hours on the road, and stayed only 3 hours in Sibu. This is my first visit to Sibu in my whole life.

These cat statues are decorated according to the festive seasons to add more sparks and celebration mood to the festivals. During this Chinese New Year, they were dressed in something called Du4Dou1 (Chinese bellyband), which is a traditional Chinese undergarment a long time ago. Now, blessed with the creativity of designers, the DuDou has become one of the most popular fashion around the world. People start to wear them for various occasions such as to dinners and parties.

We were so eager to get these cats photographed because they really looked adorable in the DuDou. So, we have made a few attempts. The early attempts were not very successful because it was raining. Then, we tried to go at night thinking that they would look nicer because of the lights and lamps decorations on the street but we were wrong.

As you can see, the statues are facing outwards but the spot lights were shining on their backs and darken the face of the cat. At the end, we decided to go again during the day in order to get a better view of the statues.

And there we were again, trying to get them into the pictures in broad day light this time. However, it wasn’t as easy as it seemed at all due to the fact that these cat statues were situated at a junction where the traffic is quite unpredictable, plus, it is always difficult to get a car park there. Fortunately, there is a traffic light at one of the junctions and we took the opportunity to take their photographs. We took two turns to get satisfied photographs taken.

Soon, the bellybands will be taken away from them and they’ll change back to normal cat statues again till the next festive season arrives.