Nikon D7500

My favourite camera brand remains as Nikon and I got myself upgraded to D7500 from D7000 earlier this year.

Consideration factors:

• Tilting TFT touch-sensitive LCD. This adds flexibility to the type of shots I want to take.
• Information display on the top-right LCD panel. This eliminates the lower end cameras without such a feature. This is important in my shooting workflow.
• Full-frame camera is not necessary. This eliminates the top-end full-frame camera meant for professionals.

All these factors led me to the specific choice of Nikon D7500.

For a full specifications do refer to http://www.nikon.com.sg/en_SG/product/digital-slr-cameras/d7500

Carrying multiple cards in the wallet when taking MRT

Have you ever wanted to tap your wallet (containing multiple credit cards, ez-link cards, cash card etc) onto the MRT gantry, only to find that the gantry will throw you an error regarding multiple cards? But how did that dude in-front of you manage to pass the gantry just by tapping his wallet and not taking out the MRT fare card? Surely he has multiple cards in his wallet as well?

After doing some investigation, it turns out that no matter what card you are carrying, the important point is to identify whether the cards that you are carrying in your wallet has the ez-link logo (on the left in the picture below) or the MRT logo (on the right in the picture below)

It does not matter if the credit card supports paywave or not, and it does not matter if it is a debit card, credit card or cash card. As long as either of the 2 logos are there on the card, it will be picked up by the gantry. It is therefore advisable not to have more than one of these cards in the wallet at the same time.

For my case I am using my DBS Debit/ATM card as my MRT fare-card, so there is no need to buy a dedicated ez-link fare card. I have another credit card that has the MRT logo which I do not carry. Instead I added the credit card onto Apple Pay and so the physical card is now redundant.

Topeak Accessories

I have gotten myself some of Topeak's accessories as below.

The Topeak Mini 9 toolkit. I like that additional 8mm wrench that is missing in other models.

The Pocket Rocket DX II hand-pump. You can put it in the car or mount it on the bike, and be prepared for any onsite need. The smart head can fit both Schrader and Presta valves, the locking mechanism is also easier to operate. It is not the lightest hand-pump around though.

The JoeBlow Max HP floor pump. It can bring any puncture up to full pump within seconds.

Bike Friday New World Tourist

I got myself a Bike Friday New World Tourist!

The main reason for getting the bike is really the double chain ring at 53/39T as well as the drive wheel size of 20 inches. The rear cassette has 11-28 teeth, so this equates to about 20 * 53/11 = 96.4 for the highest gear inches and 20 * 39/28 = 27.9 for the lowest gear inches. 

Bike Friday - New World Tourist

Wellgo M111 detachable pedals

Wheel-Sport Smart 20-inch rims

FullSpeedAhead (FSA) Vero crankset and Shimano front derailleur

Shimano Tiagra rear derailleur

Selle Italia Flite Flow saddle and Zixtro saddle bag

SRAM MRX twist shifter and Tektro brake levers

Polygon Bikes Apparels

Gotten myself Polygon Bikes cycling jersey and shorts from Rodalink.

Bicycle Lights

Installed the Smart Superflash (rear) and KNOG Blinder 1 Standard (front) onto my Tikit

Polar RC3 GPS

Head over to polar website to read about the features of the Polar RC3 GPS that I bought to monitor my cycling and running exercises.

Selle Italia Flite Flow (Black)

Upgraded my saddle to the Selle Italia Flite Flow (Black) after taking my butt, thigh and hip measurements at Hup Leong.

Here is a video for it:

99 useful tips

http://dedalvs.tumblr.com/post/48998678919/99-life-hacks-to-make-your-life-easier

Manage Favourites/Home/Office locations on Garmin Nuvi 40LM

Garmin Nuvi GPS allows the saving of favourite locations into memory so that there is no need to re-key in the same set of addresses over and over again if you need to go to such places frequently. For example you could save Home and Office locations into the GPS and you could quickly activate it to navigate to those locations from wherever you are on the road.

There was one day which I accidentally saved a wrong address as my Home location and I had a hard time figuring out how to change it on my Garmin Nuvi 40LM. I used to be able to able to do it easily on the Nuvi 2465, which often had menu options within the navigation screen. This is not the case for the Garmin Nuvi 40LM.

I managed to find out how to do that one day. As below are the steps required.

	Start from the home screen. Tap on Where To?
	Tap on Favourites. (You may need to scroll up or down the menu to locate that option)
	Tap on Home (or any other favourite locations that you want to remove) Note: I do not live in Teban Gardens, this is just a bogus address.
	A map of the selected location will be presented. Tap on the white speech balloon that is surrounding the address field.
	You will be presented with some options that you can use for that location. Tap on Delete.
	Confirm the deletion by tapping on Yes.

That location should then be gone from Favourites.

Unstable Wireless Connectivity

A few weeks ago I have started to experience unstable wireless connectivity within my home network, which is connected to the SingTel Fibre 100Mbps.

First of all just to give a brief overview of my home network:

I am using the ASUS RT N56U as the main wireless router to connect to the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) in the living room. To extend the wireless coverage in my study room, I deployed the ASUS RT N15U running on Wireless Repeater mode (The N15U also has the Router mode as well as the Access Point mode). 2 PCs are connected to N15U's gigabit ethernet ports, the printer is connected to the USB port and my other work laptop is connected to the wireless network extended by the N15U.

Initially I was thinking that the ASUS router and repeater must have been acting up to give me weird connectivity issues (the 2 PCs and the laptop start to have intermittent Internet connectivity at around the same time in the evenings). Could it be due to the extra load in the evening caused by the 2 PCs, 1 laptop, various mobile phones and tablets that are connected to the home network, thus causing the strain to the equipment?

I even bought the Linksys E2500 as the replacement for the main router.. but the problem persisted.

...until I read that such wireless connectivity issue could be related to the fact that more and more wireless base stations/routers are springing up among my neighbours - This could cause interference to the wireless signal and effectively lower the connection speed or even cause disruptions.

Immediately I tried changing the N56U's control channel (to a channel that is less used - 13. I found that out by performing a wireless network scan via the N15U) and narrowing the channel bandwidth from 20/40MHz to only 20MHz. Voila! the wireless network speed improved tremendously and the network bandwidth test (for my laptop) at speedtest.net yielded up to 20Mbps upload speed, which I am quite happy with (considering that the laptop is at the other end of the apartment away from the main router and is also connected via wireless).

Now I have to scratch my head to think of what to do with the Linksys E2500 router.

Garmin Nuvi 40LM

Recently I have upgraded to the Garmin Nuvi 40LM for my GPS needs. "LM" stands for lifetime map updates, so I should not have to worry about having to pay to update the maps from now onwards. There are free maps out there that could be downloaded onto the device, but in my opinion they are not as useful as the official Garmin maps.

The Compass and Bluetooth functions (can answer phone with the GPS unit once they are paired up) on my previous Garmin Nuvi 2465 were not very often used. As for the voice command, it was only accurate when dictating numbers and not words (maybe it was my diction that was causing the problem) but anyway it did not prove to be useful under most circumstances.

(picture credit: Garmin)

Just another photo of tikit

Just a photo of tikit

Convenience of a folding bicycle

If you ask me what is it so great about folding bicycles as compared to normal bicycles, here it is:

In fact, two of such bicycles can be folded and stored within the boot of a mid-size sedan (not even MPV or SUV), one on each side of the boot.

What I practically do is to store my bicycle and also squeeze in my son's 14-inch kid bicycle, and we can go to a park to ride our bicycles. This is done without installing any bicycle rack at the back of my car.