PC Fair used to be a place where you can get some nice deals, and see some nice gear on sale. But... in recent years it has just devolved into nothing might just a great big waste of time since things aren't any cheaper at PC Fair, in fact there're instances where things are more expensive then what you can get at Low Yat. While it is true that you get more freebies at PC Fair, you have to ask yourself if it's worth the time and effort of getting over to KLCC and making your way through the crowd.

So.. I made this short video detailing the PC Fair experience. It's short and boring... kinda like going to PC Fair yourself.

When Silverlight 2.0 was released, it came with the ability to view image pyramids built in. The feature is called Deep Zoom and it's a very interesting function, you can find GREAT examples of Deep Zoom usage over at www.deepzoomstudio.com.

Deep Zoom at it's most basic form is to allow you to see BIG pictures without downloading the whole thing at once and killing your bandwidth. For example, this knife picture below is a demonstration of Deep Zoom.

This is the RAW untouched file of the image I used in my Leatherman Style CS review, straight from the camera its 4592 x 3056 in size. And it's of course unheard of to upload the raw image onto the web for viewing purposes. But thanks to Deep Zoom and the spanking new http://www.zoom.it it's no longer a problem.

All you have to do is first upload the big original image into a PUBLICALLY ACCESSIBLE location like Flickr or Live Photos, then go to Zoom.It and drop the URL of the picture into it and it'll spit back up a link or script which you can use to show people your extra large image file all nice and viewable in a zooming viewer.

Deep Zoom has a few issues in practical applications, The Semi Pro feels that it encourages WAAAY too much pixel peeping if you apply it onto a normal picture. For example... here's a panoramic shot straight from the NEX-3 in WEB safe resolution.

Generally looks fine, and people won't care too much about the stitching imperfections etc. etc. But... if I allowed the viewers to see the ACTUAL image, what would happen then?

What happens when they can see all the imperfections? Pixel peepers would just use it as an opportunity to find problems in your equipment and editing among other issues.

The other problem... is the FEMALE issue. If you told your model that you're going to allow people to be able to inspect every SINGLE, MINUTE DETAIL of the picture you're taking of her, that any minute flaw that your lense is able to pick up, viewers will be able to see? Most likely they'll tell you to never call them again! This is because all the beauty is gone when you look at them up close! Can you find the mole on her left arm and leg?

This is not the best example... just be thankful there's no one around to take a picture of my face with the 50mm Macro.

Zoom.it also work on webpages as well, so do check it out even if you know that if you used it on pictures of anyone, they'd probably kill you. And to cap it off, here's a self stiched panorama that's 9154x2395 in size. These are things which you really want to use Zoom.It on!

I always criticize that Bing Maps (http://maps.bing.com) is so bloody useless for Malaysian maps because they have ZERO street data on Malaysia. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) become more useful a few years back when they finally added Malaysian maps data to their DB. So imagine my surprise when I loaded up Bing Maps today and saw....

And that was a BIG surprise for me, their map data looked more like street only data, let's compare it with Google Maps of the same area.

View Larger Map

Google has more of the localized building names, if you go to the full map you'll see that Digital Mall is marked on it already.

Routing is already supported on the maps so they obviously have real road data, though Bing Maps location DB is very very limited, you can search for street names well enough, (My bad, while the street names do show up when you get driving instructions, you can't SEARCH for them yet) but buildings? Not so much, doesn't even know where One Utama is.

But it's a good start, at least it means someone actually cares enough to provide us with map data now. Also, I do like one simple little feature in Bing Maps which I just don't understand why Google Maps can't do properly.

For me to put a pin in a Bing Maps embed, all I had to do was right click in the map window and select "Place Pushpin Here!"

View Larger Map

Where as for Google Maps I had to right click and select What's Here BEFORE I even create the embed link, not to mention it brings in some additional search results as well. I understand that Google Maps's embed feature is very powerful, allowing you to include search results and other information on the embedded map, but they should realize that sometimes users just want to be able to tell people "X marks the spot!"

Other than the lack of location information, Bing Maps seems to have multiple map source images. After I discovered that the WEB was working I immediately tried using the Bing Mobile application on my phone, but alas, they were still getting the OLD useless maps like this.

Hopefully they'll synchronize and update the map DB before the launch of Windows Phone 7 here so we can actually have SOME sort of map application!

It's time for another Marauderz movie rants, this time for the current Best Movie Of The Year candidate Inception. Ok... so for those of you who are still planning to see this movie, you need to stop reading NOW.

Ok...

Seriously.. this is the last line of spoiler warning I'm giving you.

Ok... let's go. Here are my rants about the movie that everyone seems to be calling bloody fantastic.

• Cost Of Dying In The Virtual World - When I heard of the basic premise of the movie, I immediately brought up a list of things one would put in a movie like this, on top of that list. YOU DIE IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD, YOU ARE SCREWED. My thoughts were put at ease in the beginning when they said that dying would just wake the guy up, but HELLO... SUPER STRONG DRUGS FTW!!! I'm personally super sick of the notion that if someone made some kind of virtual world system which you plug into and experience that they wouldn't TRIPLE check it to make sure that a hard disconnect wouldn't just leave you disoriented.
• Spending a lifetime in a shared dream - Wow.. what a great concept... spend a lifetime in a dream, building the world with your every thoughts. But wait a sec! Weren't we told that the subconscious projections, the white blood cells, they're able to sense the intruder, and even if they aren't highly trained military assassins whose aiming is as good as a storm trooper, they'd just maul you to death like a pack of zombies. Of course... some would argue that limbo is DEEEEEEEEEEP within the subconscious and thus there are no projections. Ok... that leads me to the other rant
• A lifetime to build a world with your imagination - You spend 50 FARKING YEARS in a virtual world which you can mold with your VERY THOUGHTS, and all you could come up with was a plain cityscape that Wall-E could have made? COME ON!!!! A couple of dreamers... happily in love with each other (at least in the oh... first 10 years?), able to build with their VERY THOUGHTS!  And all we get are plain, gray skyscrapers?!?! Gheezzz.. where's the giant Ferris wheel the size of KL Towers (at least) Where's the weird buildings which... oh... never mind I want this to stay PG... SEE!!! I just put a picture of a structure which you could build in your imagination... But what do we get with this pair of idiots? Skyscrapers... plain..  gray... skyscrapers..
• Tourists - "I need to come with you to ensure you done the deed" First of all... you CAN'T ensure the deed, after all. They're supposed to be planting an idea, how it actually matures from there you can't guarantee that. Second of all, You didn't actually witness the deed cause you were DEAD! SLEEPING! LIMBO!!! Oh whatever...
• The Ending - Like my brother said the moment De Caprio pulled out the top "As if you didn't see that coming!" The top kept spinning at the end. Here's how that ending could have been made much much better, and all it would take is just a few more seconds, show the top wobbling yet about to fall, but doesn't. Then get someone to knock it over. You can STILL build a sequel from that if you wanted to but at least it's much better a book end. Oh.. that little after piss shake the top does seconds before the fade to black doesn't count.

First Avatar... now this, why do I have this feeling I won't be able to

On a side note, there was a little scene over at GSC Tropicana City where a father who brought in bread for his child to eat got acosted by the staff on their no outside food rule. Dad got so pissed he flattened the bread, mom got scared, son was heard screaming that he didn't want to go in and watch the movie anymore.. Seriously GSC... it's just for the kid. COME ON lar!!!

One last attempt to figure out how the fb:like button works.