My Rambling Thoughts

USB travel chargers

I brought four devices with me on this trip: two handphones, a camera and a tablet. Thus, I brought along two USB chargers, a 3-way plug and a travel adapter. They took up much space and were somewhat unwieldy to use.

Lesson learnt. I set out to find a dual USB travel charger.

I decided on a dual-charger as I think it is a good balance between functionality, size, weight and price. Quad-chargers are noticably larger and heavier, draw a lot more current (6.8A max) and are more expensive.

Not all USB chargers are created equal, so don't go buying the first or cheapest one in sight.

The cheapest ones can only draw a max of 2A to 2.5A, regardless of the number of ports. Read the specs carefully. Then, some chargers have fixed plugs, so a travel adapter is needed.

What I found most suitable after some research, online and in shops:


Energea TravelWorld 3.4 dual-USB charger kit

Energea has a nice range of adapters. In order of preference:

  • TravelWorld 3.4 kit (S$39)
  • Travelite 3.4 US+UK plug (S$32.90)
  • Ampcharge 3.4 UK plug (S$26.90)

I like the design for the Travelite 3.4 US+UK plug. The charger has US plug, but you can slide the UK plug over it. Very compact. The kit extends this idea by bundling the Euro and China plugs.

Energea has a tri-charger (4.8A), but it is elusive. The dual-chargers only support up to 3.4A (17W), but they are good enough for me. They supposedly support "Rapid Charge", but I don't know if this is the same as Quick Charge (QC). I prefer not to use QC as it gets hot.

My second choice would be the Innergie PowerJoy Plus (3A, 15W; 50g) or PowerJoy Pro (4.2A, 21W; 81g) [2.1A per port]. However, these are slightly more expensive (S$40+) and need a travel adapter.

I found the TravelWorld 3.4 kit after visitng four Challenger stores. Mission accomplished!

It takes time to switch transits

We spent a lot of time on meals and on travelling. We had expected these, but we did not account for the time to switch between transits.

We touched down at 12:05 pm, but it took a long time to clear the Customs and had our lunch. We reached the Taoyuan highspeed rail station by bus at 1:55 pm. I remembered that because we just missed the 2 pm train. Luckily, the next train was at 2:20 pm, so it was a short wait.

(Tip: determine the carriage number correctly. Our seats were 12B and 12C, which I mistook for carriage 12. We spent 10 minutes walking from carriage 12 to 3 after boarding.)

We arrived at Tainan at 4:03 pm (very punctual), but it took an unexpected 25+ minutes to get to our hotel (taxi fare NT$400). The highspeed rail station was in the countryside and resembled a budget airport terminal.

By the time we settled in, it was 5 pm already, and it was too late to go to the sights that Missus had planned. There was a historical site nearby the hotel, so we visited that.

On the second day, we left Tsou-Ma-Lai farm at 12:30 pm (we spent too long there) and only reached Alishan Forest Recreation Area at 3:20 pm. It took us another 20 minutes to walk in.

The next day, we left our hotel at 9:10 am and reached Sun Moon Lake at 11:45 am. It was 1 pm by the time we finished our lunch. We left the area at 3:50 pm and reached our next hotel at 5:25 pm.

On the fourth day, we left Qingjing farm at 2:55 pm (we should have left much earlier cos it was raining heavily and there were no sheeps in sight) and reached Taizhong at around 4:40 pm. It was not too late to go sightseeing, but it was raining quite heavily and that put a damper on our moods. The city was jammed and our driver sort-of got lost, so we only reached Carrefour at 6 pm — she brought us there to shop for jackets. I was hesitant to buy them because the coldest parts of our trip were mostly over!

The next day, we left for Taipei without any sightseeing, not even the park opposite the hotel, as it was still drizzling. I took a 2-hour hike in the hotel vicinity looking for a bank to exchange money, though. (Tip: only Bank of Taiwan exchanges most foreign currencies. I had to make the trip twice because I did not bring my passport.) As a result, we had our lunch at 12:55 pm and only left the hotel at 2 pm. We reached the highspeed rail station just in time to miss the 2:30 pm train. The next train was at 3:05 pm. Missus was not happy because it meant that we would reach Taipei late and had wasted the day again. We reached the Taipei station at 4 pm, but we needed to take MRT to our hotel and only reached it at 4:40 pm. Total journey time: 2 hours 40 minutes. It was not a wasted day because we went to the night-street nearby our hotel.

The sixth day, we reached Taipei Zoo at 2:45 pm after a full morning of events. It was quite out of the way; the trip took 45 minutes. We spent way too long there and left only at 4:20 pm. (Recommendation: don't go.) It took us 25 minutes to walk to the Maokong Gondola station with snacks in-between. We finally reached the top of the mountain at 5:20 pm. It was drizzling, so we were not inclined to walk around much. It was also too late for afternoon tea, one of the reasons to go there. By the time we finished our dinner — our most expensive meal at NT$1,122 (S$48.23) — at 6:40 pm, the sky was pitch dark already. And it was chilly cold. We had nowhere to go but back. It was 8:40 pm when we reached our hotel at Songshan.

The seventh day was sort-of okay. We deposited our bags with our next hotel at Beitou at 11:10 am, then we had our lunch. We reached our first stop of the day, National Palace Museum, at 12:40 pm. I love to look at authentic historical artifacts, but I found the experience mildly disappointing. We left at 2:10 pm, and it took us 30 minutes to get back to Shilin MRT station. We had our teabreak and left for our next stop, Tamsui, at 3:30 pm. We reached there at 4:05 pm, walked along the waterfront and old street and left at 5:20 pm. We reached Beitou at 6 pm, but it took us 20 minutes to decide on a place to eat. It rained heavily after that, so we called it a day.

The last day (8th day), our flight was 2:50 pm, but we left for the airport at 10:55 am. That was because we did not web check-in and the hotel said it would take 1.5 hours by taxi to reach the airport. In fact, it took us 40 minutes (flat fare NT$1,200) and we web check-in at the airport. In other words, we could have left at 12:30 pm and have a 3-hour morning walk around the town.

On meals

We spent on average an hour per meal, which was an improvement over the 1.5 hours last year. We should target 30-45 minutes for breakfast and lunch to allow more time for sightseeing.

The usual advice is to have a full breakfast, then have a late heavy lunch (to have energy) and a light dinner. But it did not work for us. For one, the breakfasts, even though they were buffet-style, were just not filling.

One thing we quickly realized was that we needed a teabreak at around 3:30 pm to revitalize ourselves. Walking around was tiring. That was easy due to the large number of snack stores around.

We should have paid more attention to the cost. Tourist places were very expensive — as expensive as Singapore. The most expensive were the Chinese restaurants. Local eateries, in contrast, were half the cost.

DayLSDS
1388415
250560870
363060690
41,080715
5592430100
6561751,122
7230280240
8306

As a guide, anything above NT$400 (S$17.19) for two is touristy. Anything above NT$800 are tourist traps.

(We spent a bit more on days 2-4 [day 2 dinner, day 4 lunch and dinner] because we invited the driver to eat with us. She paid for one dish for day 3 dinner, so that was not counted.)

How we can do better

If there are no night activities, sleep earlier, say at 9 pm. Wake up at 7 am, have breakfast and be ready to leave by 8:30 am. This gives time for morning activites. In contrast, we often went out as late as 10 am, which gave us very little time until lunch.

One problem we had was looking for places to eat. Sometimes we found one easily, but other times, we spent up to 30 minutes looking for one. One reason was that Ji Ji was very fussy. But perhaps we tried too hard. Next time, it is plain rice for him. :lol:

The $60 weight lesson

The two most unnecessary expenses of the trip were the winter wear and the overweight charge.

If we had brought our own jackets, we would have saved NT$1,398 (S$60.09) and half the weight. The jackets we bought were more suitable for single-digit degree celsius — they were thick and heavy at 900 grams each — so we would not have much chance to use them. We probably still had to buy the thermal wear (NT$637) because our jackets were more suited for 18-20 degree celsius. It went as low as 12 degree celsius at times.

We were overweight by 4.3 kg and were charged NT$1,400 (S$60.17). It would have been hard to shred that much weight. Where we went wrong was that we brought too much stuff with us.

We were overconfident because we brought three luggages with us (two cabin-sized and one small-sized) and one of them was empty. We went with two luggages; the small luggage was packed inside one cabin-sized luggage.

Jetstar's weight allowance was 21 kg, but our luggages weighed 7.4 kg already (2.9 kg + 2.9 kg + 1.6 kg). We bought around 7 kg of stuff, that means we brought 10 kg of stuff!

You know the saying, take half the clothes and twice the money.

How we could do better:

  • We could do with half the clothes, especially in cold weather, where we seldom sweat anyway. Clothes are heavy. A thumb of rule is a shirt every two days. In cold weather, it could be every 3-4 days.
  • Missus had planned to wash the clothes midway — yet we brought too many clothes in spite of this. We lucked out because our mid-journey hotel had a dryer. Not all hotels have it.
  • Don't bring electric toothbrush. Bring a tiny toothpaste tube.
  • Bring a dual-USB travel charger instead of two separate USB chargers, a 3-way plug and a travel adapter!
  • Weigh our luggages before leaving home to check how much we have packed.
  • Weigh our luggages before flying home to check if we are under the weight limit. This will give us more time to repack / throw stuff away.

Baby stuff:

  • Minimize milk powder and bottles
  • No need for pajamas as the blanket is warm enough

We brought two milk containers and two milk bottles, because we thought we needed to bring one set out. It turned out not. We should be able to do without any milk bottles at all — for a four year old. They don't weigh much, but they take up a lot of space.

Last year, we were too dependent on milk to supplement Ji Ji's meals because he was too fussy. We should have just let him starve. This year, he only needed to drink milk before sleeping.

Lesson learnt: how to travel light with a 3-4 year old.

Where did the money go?

Effective exchange rate: S$23.2657 = NT$100. Changed NT$35,000 @ 23.24:100 locally, then changed NT$13,998 @ 23.33:100 at Bank of Taiwan. Generally, I find better rates overseas, hotels apart. Holiday Inn Express's rate was 22.04. Capital Hotel's rate was a cut-throat 20.50! Tip: remember to bring passport along!

Quick exchange rate: divide by 20. NT$100 = ~S$5 (cheap), NT$500 = ~S$25 (medium), NT$1,000 = ~S$50 (expensive!).

Flight

Price
Taxi to/fro$76
Plane$796.35
Meals$90
Insurance$234
Souvenirs$45
Excess luggage$60.17
Total$1,301.52

Meals (six of them!) and insurance are estimated. Total plane fare is $1,120.35 for 3 people.

We were overweight by 4.3 kg on our way back and were charged NT$1,400! If we bought the luggage space upfront, it would have costed S$27 only.

We should have repacked our luggage by wearing the heaviest clothes (including the jackets) and throwing away the water bottles (which we ended up doing later anyway).

Accomodation

DayHotelPrice
1Rich Hotel$78.11
2Tea Cloud B&B$127.84
3Euro Country Villa$121.06
4Holiday Inn Express$108.58
5Capital Hotel$125.84
6$125.84
7Nine Plus Spa Hot Spring Hotel$155.58
Total$842.85

Rich Hotel was the cheapest, but was the most spacious. They gave two queen-sized beds!

Tea Cloud B&B had odour from the toilet drain and very thin walls.

Euro Country Villa was originally S$103.87. It charged an additional NT$400 (S$17.19) due to sharing of room with children. It had electric mattress.

Holiday Inn Express's room was very slightly slanted and my balance was off: I felt like falling all the time. It had coin-operated washing machines and dryers.

We got the smallest room in Capital Hotel. It was so small that I asked Missus right away if we could change room. Sure, for NT$500 more. I stayed. It turned out fine. It had the best toilet bowl. :-D

Nine Plus Spa Hot Spring Hotel was a disappointment. Hot spring brought to mind an outdoor open-air environment. Nope. It was a giant "bathtub" in the bathroom. It was a spacious bathroom — almost as big as the hotel room — but it was still a bathroom. It was a mood killer.

Expenses

12345678NT$
Transport2,8404,5004,5005,5001,6856201,20020,845
Meals8031,3751,3201,7951,0221,6834703068,774
Snacks808010075280615
Attractions1007707005906005003,260
Souvenirs9101,1496002,659
S - Food4505103001,260
S - Clothes2,0352002,235
Misc500160100760
Total4,2436,7257,96011,0693,1673,0782,3601,80640,408

The high-speed rail was surprisingly expensive.

We tipped our driver NT$1,000, but the effective amount was around NT$600 as she bought some gifts for us.

We bought NT$2,035 worth of winter wear. There was no discount even though it was "final clearance" (last week of season). We should have brought our own from home. Missus told me the temperature was above 20 degree celsius, which I thought was unbelievably warm for early March. It was true for Tainan only. It was cold (12-14 degree celsius) on mountains, at night in Taichong and Taipei, especially with wind and rain.

Audit

NT$
Total48,998
Spent40,408
Counted elsewhere1,800
Left6,674
Unaccounted116

Total expenses

Amt
Flight$1,301.52
Accomodation$842.85
Expenses$1,736.81
Unaccounted$4.99
Lost item$9.90
Total$3,896.07

I lost my umbrella on the second last day. It fell off my luggage because I did not secure it properly. Tip: never leave home without an umbrella in Taiwan in March.

LTA does not like Tesla

Mr Joe Nguyen, 44, works as a senior vice-president in an Internet research company. He paid for a used Tesla Model S from Hong Kong for close to S$400k.

For electric cars, LTA will test for CO2 emissions produced by the power station. VICOM claims the car consumes 444 watt-hour/km.

LTA applies a grid emission factor of 0.5 g/watt-hour, so the vehicle produces 222 g/km of CO2. This puts it in the S$15k surcharge band of the CEVS (Carbon Emission Vehicle Scheme). Previously, the Peugeot Ion (an electric car) qualified for $20k rebate and the BMW i3 hatchback (also electric) qualified for $30k rebate.

It is obvious there are three problems.

First, the CO2 emission is for emission by the car. The intention is to reward efficient and clean engines. Electric cars produce no emission.

Second, by using CO2 emission produced by the power station, LTA is "double-counting". It is already accounted for in the electrical tariff.

Third, how can anyone believe the car use 444 watt-hour/km? I suspect it is fast-charging or under heavy load, hence the high rate. The car has a 70 kWh battery and a range of 370 km. That works out to be 189 watt-hour/km, or 94.5 g/km. It qualifies for a rebate of $30k (< 95 g/km)!

Transformers the Movie Reconstructed!

Metrodome released their Transformers the Movie: Reconstructed DVD in 2005, promising it to be the best release ever. The video will be remastered and fully open-matte, and the disc will be loaded with extras.


Aspect ratio 1.41:1

What we got:

  • The video is a bit soft
  • The brightness level is too high, blowing out the highlights
  • It has a botched NTSC-to-PAL conversion
  • There is no original audio track

The video is stored as anamorphic (but only 570x576 due to its aspect ratio), and displays as 810x572 (16:9 is 1024x576). Many reviewers give them grief because they would have higher horizontal resolution if they encode it as 4:3 (store at 720x544, display at 768x544). I think this is okay — the video is not that sharp anyway.

The video is 25 fps, but is interlaced. From HandBrake:

deinterlaced 53437 | blended 9349 | unfiltered 64714 | total 127500

Sony's 4:3 version:

deinterlaced 3378 | blended 4986 | unfiltered 116555 | total 124919

The good thing is that HandBrake managed to deinterlace most of the frames, but there is still a good 7.3% blended frames.

Unlike Sony's 20th anniversary edition DVD set, this is not worth much. It goes for 8 pounds new and 50 pence used on Amazon UK. I bought one in very good condition for 2.09 pounds, after which the seller reduced his price to 39 pence! Shipping costs 3.58 pounds and it took a month to arrive!

Compare with Sony's 20th anniversary edition 4:3 DVD

It is a little too warm (yellow tint). The open-matte is its only saving grace.

Ultimate Edition?

Metrodome released the 2-disc Ultimate Edition in 2007 to make up for their mistakes. From reviews, disc 1 is a well-restored widescreen US version, and disc 2 is a poor quality open-matte UK version. It also has a commentary track, the original audio track and lots of extras.

It is available for 10 pounds new and under 1 pound used!

Scaling x264

Source: 5-minutes clip of a somewhat grainy 1080p BD, no audio.

Encoder: HandBrake 0.10.2. x264, slower preset, CRF 20, ref=4:bframes=6.

CPU: Intel Xeon CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50 GHz (Ivy Bridge).

OS: RHEL 6.7.

#proc1 CPUw/HT2 CPUs2 CPUs w/HT
11.197184
22.2483001.3426432.369301
44.2467092.5861034.4966802.806427
66.5188156.576704
88.6663324.9116008.5216275.375662
1010.75276910.564326
127.42773412.837382
169.82083916.9346719.984207
2012.23340421.036810
2414.783540
3219.225470
4022.863874

Encoding speed in fps.

No scaling, decomb, denoise or any filters are used.

HyperThreading (HT) improves performance by only ~15%.

Using cores from two CPUs is slightly faster than using cores from the same CPU, up to 6 cores (3+3).

It scales linearly for two CPUs all the way to 20 cores (at ~1.1 fps per core). Based on my past experience, I expected a hit of 25%.

x265 1.9 presets test

Ivy Bridge

Intel Xeon CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50 GHz. (3 real and 3 HT cores are used.)

PresetFPSQPkbps
ultrafast13.25300128.683532.25
superfast9.09717828.444075.80
veryfast6.83265125.945675.35
faster6.73921325.945678.02
fast5.67924425.825742.07
medium4.35279425.876479.05
slow1.94891125.736406.73
slower0.51491425.917263.44
veryslow0.43879925.836494.81
placebo0.26277826.194621.23

Haswell

Intel Xeon CPU E5-2660 v3 @ 2.60 GHz. (3 real and 3 HT cores are used.)

PresetFPSQPkbps
ultrafast19.257954
superfast12.326118
veryfast10.294012
faster9.587936
fast8.157241
medium6.504989
slow2.830036
slower0.695992
veryslow0.602745
placebo0.358910

Takeaway

The settings are changed. psy is raised from 1.0 to 2.0, causing a huge increase in bitrate. Despite limit-modes and limit-refs, v1.9 is not significantly faster than v1.8.

Also, v1.9 has buggy two-pass bitrate control.

Trump Your Way Through

Make America Great Again!

Dealing with grainy MPEG-2 video

Someone asked for help when he was unable to encode as well compared to a "reference" video he found online. The x264 settings from that file:

cabac=1 / ref=16 / deblock=1:-2:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=tesa / subme=9 /
psy_rd=1.5:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 /
8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=5 / nr=0 /
decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=12 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 /
direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) /
rc=2pass / bitrate=1966 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 /
qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 /
aq=1:1.00

This is informative — some encoding groups used to mask it to avoid leaking their "secret sauce" — but encoding is now almost as easy as picking the veryslow preset. The real secret, as always, is in the use of filters.

The most important setting, as far as size is concerned, is bitrate=1966. It uses 1.966 Mbps.

I asked him for a 3-min clip. I got 5.094 Mbps for my first attempt, compared to the original's 5.278 Mbps (MPEG-2). The first thing is to find the "correct" CRF. By correct, I mean the highest CRF that still looks as good as the original.

CRFbitrate
org5.278
205.094
224.206
243.298
262.263
271.781
281.348
300.759

CRF 28 is when it crossed my visual threshold, so I would go with either 26 or 27. With CRF 27, the bitrate is already lower than the reference — assuming both have the same average bitrate — and it still has most of the grain!

What happens with CRF 28?

As the CRF is increased, the higher frequencies, corresponding to details and noise, are cut off. With CRF 28, the cut-off is low enough to reduce the grain. With CRF 30, the grain is almost entirely gone! I'm not sure I want to rely on this, though.

Denoise

Next is to denoise it. hqdn3d denoise does not work, even with my "sure-to-work" strong temporal settings. Looking at the failed attempt, my take is the grain is (i) attenuated [due to insufficient DVD bitrate], (ii) aliased and coarser [due to SD res] and (iii) mixed with MPEG-2 artifacts.

But NLMeans denoise can work. After a few tests, I settled on 6:0.5:3:5:6:0. What it means:

Strength64 was a bit too weak, and 8 was too strong.
Origin weight0.5My default value.
Patch size3This cannot be too high for SD res. 5 made it too soft.
Search range5Just search nearby.
Frames6I usually use a max of 1/4s for animation.
Mode0Doesn't seem to have much effect, so I don't use it.

The result, with CRF 27, uses 0.705 Mbps. The video still has a bit of noise, which helps to hide the MPEG-2 artifacts. It is good enough for me, but I would still keep the source — in case we found how to encode better in the future!

Do you, remember love? (2.0)

The Macross Do You Remember Love? (DYRL) was released on blu-ray in 2012. It has two main problems: the video quality was uneven, and two of the most violent scenes were edited.

The backstory: Ichiro Itano is well-known for his gruesome art and was the animator for those scenes. He told Shoji Kawamori, the director, that the gory stuff would be unnoticeable. Ha!

Personally, I always felt these two scenes (plus one more that was left intact) were unexpectedly violent compared to the rest of the show, but then, you cannot sugarcoat battle scenes.

The video is more problematic. Many scenes are blur and grainy. They boosted the brightness of the dark areas (the show is pretty dark most of the time), and that revealed the grain. And for the first time, the video is so sharp that the flaw in the filming becomes obvious: the video is not blur, it is out-of-focus!

In Sep 2015, Bandai Visual announced they were going to re-release it in Jan 2016, but with better video quality. It would cost 5,400 yen.

 
2012 vs 2016 blu-ray (1:1)

They did two things. First, they tweak the brightness curve so that the dark areas become darker, hiding the grain. :lol: Second, they darken the lines, so that the image looks "sharper".

As a bonus, the two edited scenes are now restored, the original mono soundtrack is also included (last available in the 1999 Perfect Edition DVD), and there is a commentary track (not that it does me any good).

This is what the 30th anniversary edition should have been!

Transformers the — only — Movie

Presented in glorious widescreen:


Aspect ratio 1.75:1

For a long time, fans clamored for the widescreen edition, which they were sure they saw in 1986, instead of the "Pan & Scan" 4:3 edition on home video formats.

In 2006, Sony put out the 20th anniversary edition DVD set, with both widescreen and 4:3 versions. Guess what, the widescreen version is matted!


Aspect ratio 1.31:1

The widescreen version is slightly wider on the sides, but crops off the top and bottom. The real aspect ratio is supposed to be 1.40:1.


Aspect ratio 1.36:1

The DVD set is long OOP. I picked it up on Amazon Warehouse Deals for slightly above the original new price.

The quality is quite lacklustre. Here's hoping for a remastered 30th anniversary blu-ray, in both 16:9 and 4:3. No sale for me if 4:3 is not present. :-D

Some data on ECC soft error at last

ECC (Error-Correcting Code) RAM is nice — some even say essential — but there is very little real-world data.

Even on PCs that support ECC RAM, the OS typically does not show the number of soft errors, which is what we are interested in.

Well, googling seems to indicate that on Linux, the errors are logged to mcelog. At least this is true for our workstations running RHEL 6.x. Good thing this file is world-readable.

Results:

11 out of 81 workstations have non-zero mcelog. Out of the 11, 4 have memory scrubbing errors, which I think means an ECC soft error. 3 of them are bad RAM — the errors are logged within a short span of time (within minutes). Which means only one is real, and it occurs only once. These workstations have 12 - 64 GB RAM and have been running mostly 24/7 for 1 - 2+ years.

A typical entry:

STATUS cc000102000800c0 MCGSTATUS 0
MCGCAP 1000c1b APICID 24 SOCKETID 1
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 62
Hardware event. This is not a software error.
MCE 0
CPU 31 BANK 9
MISC 90010003c00048c ADDR 7026cf000
TIME 1453496814 Sat Jan 23 05:06:54 2016
MCG status:
MCi status:
Error overflow
Corrected error
MCi_MISC register valid
MCi_ADDR register valid
MCA: MEMORY CONTROLLER MS_CHANNEL0_ERR
Transaction: Memory scrubbing error
MemCtrl: Corrected patrol scrub error

This workstation has bad RAM but is still running normally due to ECC. The bad page is locked out after it exceeds a threshold.

Second chance pants

I have eight pants. All of them have issues.

Three pants have spoilt zippers. Three of the hems have become unstitched. Two have loosened fastener. Two have torn pockets. (Most have more than one problem!)

Of the eight, three are newer ones. They are fine, except their inseam are too short. I made a mistake when I bought them. Tip: check the length when sitting down, not just standing up.

One of my new year resolution is to get new pants. However, I also want to mend these, because it is far cheaper ^_^:

  • Zipper: $6
  • Fastener: $2
  • Pocket: $4
  • Stitch hem: $2
  • Adjust hem: $4

A new pants costs at least $40.

(There are cheaper alteration services. I just walked into the first stall I saw. Not a good strategy.)

Catching up on Transformers

Ground rules:

  • G1 and iconic
  • Cartoon form and color
  • Articulate / posable
  • One unit per model
  • No variants and repaints
  • No aftermarket prices

Third-party toys are not prohibited, but their prices are! :lol:

Should I get these Masterpiece Transformers?

  • MP-10 Convoy
  • MP-11 Starscream
  • MP-13 Soundwave
  • MP-15 Rumble & Jaguar

MP-10 Convoy. I already have MP-1, but MP-10 is the same scale as the rest of the MPs. Aftermarket price S$250.

MP-11 Starscream. I have the MP-3, but it is not cartoon color. At that time, the Masterpiece series was supposed to have real-world vehicle mode. Lesson learnt: no cartoon color, no sale. MP-11 is also slightly improved. Aftermarket price is S$480 due to its scarcity. Waiting for it to be re-issued.

MP-11 has a few variants. The most famous are MP-11SW (Skywarp) and MP-11T (Thundercracker), forming the infamous G1 Seeker trio. It is cool to see them side-by-side, but at what cost?

MP-13 Soundwave. This appeared in my "dark ages" (2010 – 2014), so I never got it. Aftermarket price S$220. Waiting for it to be re-issued.

MP-15 Rumble & Jaguar. Add-on to MP-13. There is also MP-16 (Frenzy & Buzzsaw), but they are just variants.

Note: apparently MP-10 and MP-11 were re-issued in early 2015. Oh well.

Devastator, exterminate!


Unite Warriors 03 – Devastator

There has been several Devastators by third-party companies, but this offical one by Takara Tomy has the closest resemblance to the G1 cartoon form ever. What's more, this is the biggest at 18" and cheapest at S$280 (discount available).

The combiner mode is 99% spot-on. The only thing out-of-form is the left heel. It does not look like that.

The individual robots are pretty true to their G1 form too, but there are some compromises. Mixmaster's cement mixer is forward-oriented. Long Haul is more bulky than his companions.


Robot mode

Vehicle mode

The vehicle mode is where the corners are cut. They have very limited articulation. They are more like models than toys.

Hasbro has a 95% similar model at US$150, but it is sold here by Toys"R"US for S$299.90. It is available at 20% off during Metro sales!

The Constructicons and Devastator are very iconic. Instant buy!

Notable third-party takes

The Constructicons are very popular, as are the Dinobots. Many third-party companies make them, flooding the market.

  • Hercules, 15", TFC Toys, 2012, US$529.95
  • Green Giant, 12", Make Toys, 2012, US$399.95
  • Gravity Builder, 15", Generation Toy, 2016, US$570?
  • TW-C0x, 20", ToyWorld, 2016, US$600?

ToyWorld's version, currently unnamed, is poised to be the gold standard when it comes out.

YBR overhaul

My YBR bike developed some engine noise recently. Then, I realized the handle bar will wobble violently if I don't hold it steadily. Lastly, the front brake handle needs to be pressed very deeply to get any braking effect.

I sent my bike to the workshop. Analysis: need engine overhaul ($840), steering fork bearing and seals ($180), fork arms ($90), brake pump ($95), front tyre ($130) and misc ($15).

A new lease of life after 11 years, 65,103.9 km. :-D

Now, it is not strictly necessary to overhaul the engine. Only one bearing inside is worn out. However, since the engine is already dismantled, the mechanic advised changing all the wear-n-tear parts. This is also the first time I saw the elusive built-in oil filter.

I suspect the bearing wore out prematurely due to infrequent and irregular oil change. After all, the mileage was only 65k km. The YBR can take a lot of punishment, but it is not invincible.

Bare minimum maintenance

I need to treat my bikes better. :-P

  • Pump tyres every month
  • Wash bike every month
  • Clean drive chain every 1,000 km or 3 months
  • Check oil level every 1,000 km
  • Change semi-synthetic oil every 5,000 km or a year

Endless bills

It is amazing how many bills there are to pay!

General

BillFreqModeBank
HDB housing loanMonthlyDebitPOSB
SP PowerMonthlyGIROOCBC
TC conservancy chargesMonthlyGIROUOB
TaxMonthlyGIROUOB
Singtel MobileMonthlyCCOCBC
Singnet BroadbandMonthlyCCOCBC
OCBC CCMonthlyGIROOCBC
POSB CCMonthlyManual
UOB CCMonthlyManual
NannyMonthlyManual
BillFreqModeBank
Nursery feeQuarterlyManual
HDB fire insuranceYearlyDebitPOSB
HDB mortgage protectorYearlyGIROPOSB
Property taxYearlyGIROUOB
InsuranceYearlyManual
Missus insuranceYearlyManual
MediShieldYearlyDebitCPF
Missus MediShieldYearlyDebitCPF
Web hostingYearlyManual

Transport

BillFreqModeBank
Car insuranceYearlyManual
Car road taxBiannualManual
Car HDB office parkingMonthlyManual
Car HDB season parkingMonthlyGIROOCBC
CB400F insuranceYearlyManual
CB400F road taxBiannualManual
CB400F HDB season parkingMonthlyGIROOCBC
YBR insuranceYearlyManual
YBR road taxYearlyManual
YBR HDB season parkingMonthlyGIROOCBC

Ad-hoc GIRO

BillFreqModeBank
CarClubGIROUOB
SpeedpassGIROUOB

Recurring Funds Transfer

PurposeFreqModeTo
Parents allowanceMonthlyManualUOB to DBS
Missus housing loanMonthlyManualUOB to DBS
Housing loanMonthlyFTUOB to POSB
SavingsMonthlyFTOCBC to Maybank
To joint a/cMonthlyFTUOB to UOB
Ji Ji's savings a/cMonthlyFTUOB to Fairprice

The FTs are scheduled one year at a time.

Action needed

All the red items need to be automated. This is my first action item for the year.

New Year Resolutions 2016

Don't squander time.

Exercise.

Keep track of tasks/schedules.

Housekeeping.

Expenses visibility.

Simplify bill payment.

Incremental clothing replacement.

Home Improvement Project.