Birthday Party

Well...I thought it would be a funny intro to a video....:-)

The 'release' video

Here's the clip of Nat walking briskly out of the Commercial Crimes division of PDRM. He's in high-spirits and sure speaks BM better than I by a hundred miles!




Shortly before the clip began, he kissed Li Tsin...very sweet, but the sub-ed didn't want to include that ... but the very degil me, encoded the video with that part in for 3G. Sigh! Why don't I listen to people? :-)

Nat released

Yeah ... cool ... They released Nat on bail yesterday. He looked in high spirits and will definitely carry on the fight.

Yesterday as we watched the clips, Kabi commented that we were watching a politician born.

We were also struggling a little bit to get less of Li Tsin in the frame coz one of our sub-eds felt it wouldn't be professional to have her in. To me, it doesn't matter -- Li Tsin was there because Nat's her guy and it's not as though she were reporting the story.

But I guess those born from print journalism are like that ...

Even Steven -- he liked the new montage Indra did, but asked us to remove our (Malaysiakini's staff) pix from it. Maybe they should watch more broadcast news ... Anyway to each his/her own. I guess one difference between broadcast journalists and print is that the print folks are detached from the stories they do...it's reporting as oppose to presenting news.

Fav Bands

I have few fav bands coz I ain't so much of a music person. But the Cranberries, The Corrs, Four Non Blondes are one all time favourites and there's Bob Dylan too.

Going back awhile, there's Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, Rolling Stones ...

Dreams
Just My Imagination

Four Non Blondes

What's Up?

Bob Dylan

Blowin' In The Wind

The Corrs

Breathless

Release Nathaniel Now!

PKR's Nathaniel Tan was picked up by police on Friday at 4.30 pm but it wasn't until 10.30 did his family and friends were informed which unit had detained him. It turned that Nat was and still is being detained by the Cyber crimes unit of the police.

More of the story can be read in Malaysiakini.com, but do subscribe. Thanks.

Tian tersasul

Here's Tian tersasul during last week's PKR press conference (July 12) ...

Allow those who renounce Islam to leave the religion!

I'm a Minangkabau, 100%, second generation to be born here. My grandparents come from the Bukit Tinggi and Pariaman regions of Sumatra.

I cannot decide to be Dayak. Nor Jawa. Nor Batak. Minangkabau is in my genes.

But I can decide to leave Islam and adopt another religion. Or no religion for that matter. Religion is not in my genes. Neither is it in anyone else's. Religion is a belief and thought system. There's nothing solid in it. Nothing that one can hold, touch nor feel physically (I'm not talking about deities nor symbols here).

So if people like Revathi or Lina Joy want to leave Islam (regardless if they were born Muslims or came into it for whatever reason), they should be allowed to do so. They shouldn't even have to go through 'rehabilitation'. Keep on forcing them and all they do is insult the religion further.

Already Revathi says she hates Islam even more. But she's a simpleton - it is not the religion, it's always the people who profess it that often denigrate it by their actions.

Merdeka! 50th Year!

Took clips of my friends talking about what the 50th anniversary of Merdeka means to them ... Here's Bert and Jimi ....

Heading for Broadcast Asia

So we're heading to Broadcast Asia ...

Stuff in an around the office

Still fooling around with the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG65 ...

In Singapore

In Singapore for Broadcast Asia



Our site has been down...so YouTube has come to the rescue!

Meeting YK and Astral of filmalley.com

Journey to Singapore

Raziq's birthday

I've been struggling with converting the clips from the TX-1 to .avi and may have found the solution with U-lead DVD creator.

Getting out of the Expo

It's been a long 2 days and I was quite welcoming the trip back to KL ...

Singapore Expo -- what was inside

I've been encoding using Quicktime -- mpeg4 to .avi and it looks OK though the process is slow -- one at a time. So found a yahoogroup on the Xacti and they've a few links for encoders which I'll try out later ...

Jeff at Singapore expo centre for CommunicAsia

Bumped into Jeff Ooi at the Singapore expo centre...

In Singapore for Broadcast Asia

Just couldn't resist it...had to buy the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG65. The price in Singapore was so good. Just launched this year to replace the CG6 so not yet in Malaysia even. The CG6 is selling at RM1,888.00 and the CG65, is S$495 + 5% GST. So about RM1,200. Such a huge price difference.

Quite a good camera. Mpeg4, so a simple conversion on the PC for premier, and no conversion if on the Mac.

Whereas the Canon TX-1 is still giving me headaches when it comes to conversion and then importing into Premier, the Sanyo is a cinch!

Shots from the Canon Powershot TX-1 - A Seacem workshop

Ustaz Nasharuddin on the 'official' Islamic line on apostacy. Methinks me don't agree that it's a one-way street...

Interesting comment by Ustaz Nasharuddin Mat Isa, Pas newly re-elected deputy president.

Prem's take on the Lina Joy federal court judgment ...

This video is not about Lina Joy ... it's about the Canon Powershot TX-1, a hybrid camera that shoots 7.1 megapixel stills and 'high-def' video ... eats SD storage like a ravenous rat though ... less than 15 minutes of video on a 1 gig card and that wasn't even on the HD setting; just 640 x 480. Phew!

Raziq and I were out on the monorail to Berjaya Times Square and the rides on Sunday May 20th.

He really gave me a headache on the merry-go-round, spinning the 'cup' as the whole thing went round -- a double headache from a double spin.




On the monorail from Titiwangsa to Bukit Bintang

Will Jeff Ooi stand as a candidate for the coming general elections? If so under whose banner -- DAP? PKR? A mistery to be unveiled ... :-)

We gave Rudy a farewell lunch the other day ... his internship with us was up. Here's a clip of the lunch and parting words from Rudy!

This is Rudy Gunawan who is with an Indonesian human rights NGO interning with Malaysiakini for a couple of weeks.

We took him for a taste of Malaysian politics and here's his reaction.

Ijok is gone. And with it Malaysiakini.tv's viewership numbers. It was a real turn-on to see the numbers during the campaigning period shooting up as high as 50,000!

Now, it'll drop to 'normal' levels ... 1,500...2,500...3,000 a day and although already quite good, I will feel a shallowness after the 'berpuloh ribu' numbers. It'll be like the morning after the party ... massive hangover with pot and booze and you're struggling to remember what the fuck happened.

I guess the Ijok folks will feel the same way, though some will be relieved that the circus has gone back to where it came from and leaving newly tarred roads, street lamps, sewing machines and landtitles behind. It was a real boon to the Ijok folks.

BN spent RM36million from the national coffers to ensure that they win and win big. But I wonder if Najib doesn't feel hollow in this massive win, knowing full well that it was achieved on a very non-level playing field.

On hindsight, I now see the logic in PAS boycott by-election strategy. It's almost impossible to win by-elections because of the entire BN government machinery.

Generally the rakyat are slaves and BN the master -- give the rakyat a morsel and they'd do anything for BN.

Well midnight on April 28th was a wrap-up for the Malaysiakini team which covered the by-election better than any local media.

We now wait for the general election ...

The views on our videos created quite a strain on bandwidth and server performance...lucky the tech team was on hand to handle the problem.

Come end of the day, our guys can't keep talking shop ...

This is Danny, Aizu & Z Kiat.

Raziq was immensely active yesterday (Sunday April 22) at Jaya Jusco. He'd been wanting to go, but I was late in fetching him from Mum & Dad's, so when he got there he was almost running amok. :-)

Shot with the Nokia 6288 and encoded to wmv. Conversion from 3gp to avi was done with Xilisoft video converter. Pretty good software and a 'steal' at US$35.00. Haven't bought it yet though, but surely will if I can borrow a credit card.

The Barisan National is undaunted by criticism of its blatant unfair practises in using public funds to upgrade and build facilities to cajole voters to vote for them.

The much touted 3G highspeed mobile service isn't getting the reception telcos hoped it would. Certainly it doesn't seem so from the percentage of 3G subscribers in the office -- out of 38 people only 3 are 3G users.

Notwithstanding, the next step in our evolution will be for the .tv system to accept videos from 3G devices and for users (subscribers) to upload them directly. This is the challenge for the tech boys ... :-)

The idea is to have a blogging system for mobile users -- cameraphones...PDAs etc...

Why?

1. Enable keen mobile video bloggers to share their videos
2. Generate content
3. Establish a revenue model
4. Establish a homegrown mobile blogging service

We've progressed in leaps and bounds in terms of putting the system together -- certainly a long way from the wordpress days. Now our views are averaging about 2,500 a day. On the first day of the Machap by-election, we hit 9,750 views -- just 200 short of an Uncle Chilli's lunch with Prem. There's a deal...hit 10,000 and Prem will buy lunch. :-)

We're still struggling with live field coverage though, and even putting up the videos from near the action. I expect we'll get there soon...especially with the general election looming.

On another effort, we'll be trying mobile videos, specifically those shot with a cameraphone. We need to explore ways on how contributors can upload videos direct from their cameraphone. Also we might want to host video blogs too.

I shot this video with a Nokia 6288 and it looks OK. One thing about these devices, camera or subject movement is a problem. One thing though about cameraphones...there's only one mic and it faces the guy taking the shot. So if you are doing an interview, the audio on the interviewees side isn't all that good. I wonder if there's a phone with two mics?

The other problem is encoding...we're on a Windows media platform and the camera video files are either on 3gp or mpeg4 (for the higher end phones like the Nokia N93i). So far I've found a workable solution to encode 3gp files to .avi or something that Premier can import. The Mac's Quicktime Pro though has no problems in recognising and then converting 3gp files.

The following video was shot with a Nokia 6288.




The video is a complaint against DBKL's daft plan of preventing cars coming from the Jalan Pahang from joining Jalan Tun Razak / Jalan Mahameru. Traffic from Jalan Pahang have to cross over Jalan Ipoh to get to the PWTC and Jalan Mahameru and the escape road to Jalan Kucing. It's absolutely ridiculous.

We can now share videos through sites or blogs by copying and pasting the codes. Malaysiakini.tv has gone through a 'revolutionary' transformation!

In terms of video production though we still need to improve especially with audio. Audio is such a challenge!

This video is the fourth in a series of four interviews we did with Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah.