Thursday, March 26, 2009

Taking pictures in raw format

Recently, I switched to taking pictures in raw format from JPEG because proponents of it had sworn on how one could enhance and manipulate various effects from the uncompressed data using a photo-editing software.

I knew about the larger storage size of each picture needed but I did not know that Pictureproject had hundred copies of the same picture. This resulted in lack of storage space on my harddisk. Now, I had to sit down and edit each picture manually instead of hitting the auto-enhancing button in Pictureproject. Thus, my pictures of Cape May, NJ may take some time to be posted on the web.

I would revert to taking in JPEG after this round.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Test driving different car models

In my two years of renting cars, I had rented mostly economy or compact size cars such as Nissan Versa, Chevy Cobalt, and Kia Spectral. However, the last rental I had was a Chevy Impala after a free upgrade to a full size class at Enterprise.

Since I had never driven a full size car, I was not used to the wider width and heavier weight. I kept looking at my side mirrors to ensure that I kept within my lane. At parking lots, I also had to maneuver more. When I approached junctions, I had to jam break a few times because it had a longer breaking distance compared to a compact car.
After getting used to the car, I started to enjoy driving it. Pickup was smooth and at high speed, it was very stable. The downside was the low fuel efficiency.

Renting cars here definitely helped me to choose the car model I want in the future.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Lactose tolerant now

I used to visit the restroom after drinking a cup of milk because I suffered from lactose intolerant. Lactose is a milk sugar, made up of two simple sugar molecules, galactose and glucose. Since I had stopped drinking milk a long time ago, my body was not producing enough lactase, an enzyme to digest lactose. The undigested lactose became a food source for microbes in our gut which could lead to flatulence and diarrhea.

Recently, I had been inducing myself gradually by adding increasing volume of milk everyday to my coffee. Be careful not to overdose as there will be bad repercussion. Now, I can drink a cup of milk without any gastrointestinal upset. Our body does not waste energy to synthesize an enzyme which it does not use, so as the saying goes, "Use it or lose it."