My new hobby: lomo"nization"

Hmmm... It has been a roller coaster December for me. I've missed few weeks of ride thus far for a number of reasons. There's only so much that can be going right in one's personal life at one time.

As you might imagine, there's a lot to juggle, give attention to, and hope goes well from work, family and self indulgence stand point. Inevitable, not everything can be going well at once. On most year-ends, this is how it tends to go:

• Personal: long school break - vacation, weddings, monsoon season, social visits, going back to hometowns etc
• Work: Next year's business plan and budget preps, finance closure - clearing payments, claims, year end reports, more offsite meetings and the list goes on and on...

It looks like I'm going to have to switch back to YouTube from Vimeo. I noticed that the videos uploaded were not in HD even though their source files had been transcoded into high-end MP4 HD format. There's no doubt that, in my own personal opinion, Vimeo has faster video transcoding rate and slightly better video quality especially in HD.

I gotta wait...on Vimeo

As it turned out, all the limitations of being on a free account became apparent recently such as limited one HD video a week and the waiting line for video transcoding (I find this very "amusing").  I don't know what other limitations will soon appear if I keep using Vimeo's free account. But one thing for sure, ride videos will take longer time to be published and this is not going to work for my plans to share our ride experiences.

I'll need some time to figure out the right decision, drop either one or have a mix of both.
Anyway, I've digressed. Here are the videos:

Date: Saturday, November 13th 2010
Route: Sungai Long
Rider: Zaha, Suhaimi, Farizal and Faizol


Saturday morning, dark clouds loomed over the horizon. There’s and old saying in Malay, “Langit yang mendung tak semestinya hujan” or the direct English translation would sound like “An overcast sky might not necessarily mean rain”.  The ride was on, hope for the best prepare for the worst.

Zaha informed me that the Suhaimi would be joining the ride. After waited for about 20 minutes I decided to start riding my two wheels and hoping that Suhaimi would catch up later at the 2nd RV near the Kajang Perdana's clover leaf. The traffic was a bit busy with the emission polluting the early  morning fresh air.

At the Sungai Long's Toll Plaza

Darn, this HD video making is tedious. It's nice to have but a bit complicated to produce.

Riding and video recoding at the same time is a challenging task. The technique however is still a "trade secret". The biggest problem has always been managing the level of vibration, in other word how to keep a steady shot.  The camera setting has to be right before the ride.

Splitting the video has an impact on the page-view and time spent on page. I'd prefer to have all the content in one go but due to the video transcoding and time-consuming uploding process, the video posting will have to come in later. 

Anyway here are the videos taken during the ride. You're going to have to click on the "read more" link to view the video list. For some strange reason the jump-break function does not allow embedded video to be viewed on the landing page.

Here are the videos in sequential order.

UPDATE: I've created an alternative channel on Vimeo for the HD videos. Here's the link:http://vimeo.com/channels/cyclingaddicts

Date: October 31st 2010
Route: Putrajaya-Cyberjaya
Distance: 53.38KM
Time on wheels: 2H10m
Riders: Najib, Zack, Zam (Kechik), Farizal, Suhaimi (MieTador), Romzi and Faizol
Bailed: Zaha, Saipol

We're supposed to do Sungai Merab-Putrajaya but unfortunately it was a torrential downpour on Saturday. Still hopeful I waited for the rain to subside but it kept on pouring until about 9.30am. The monsoon season  is back and so does long list of wedding invitations. Yes, the long school break is just around the corner. The plus side however, for some strange reason, the traffic will be less congested.

Since the ride has been cancelled, I decided to check out Rodalink outlet at Precinct Diplomatik, Putrajaya. I think it's a pretty smart idea to open a branch here. The city has the mass and almost everyday you can see people riding bikes especially at night and on weekends.

After toiling since May 2010, CA's blog revamp project has finally been completed. It wasn't as easy as I had expected in the beginning. It was time consuming and up to a point daunting especially when facing complicated script errors. I was lucky enough to have kept a few backups as roll-back plans.

Next revamp will happen in a year time....err maybe two. Thank you for your support and patience.

Date:October 24th 2010
Route: Sungai Long
Riders: Zack, Zam Besar, Nizam & Faizol

The original plan was to ride to Mantin. Due to certain circumstances, I had to do Sg Long instead. Zaha, Farizal and Cikgu Sham however continued with the plan.

Wet Sunday ride...

It was a dark and windy Sunday morning with loads of nimbus clouds hovering over Kajang, Putrajaya and Semenyih. It already started to drizzle lightly when Nizam and I cycled our way to the Sungai Balak RV where we met up with Zack and Zam Besar.

We continued cycling through the SILK highway up until the Sungai Ramal toll plaza where we made a brief stop to check if Cikgu Sham was there. We then continued cycling and took a quick "bio-break" at Bukit Kajang's toll.

Here you go guys, the videos in HD.

It took me while to get this done. It's a lot more complicated than a MotionJPEG video like we used to have. The whole process of encoding the videos into MP4 files and uploading them to YouTube is an effort by itself but its worth it.

The breathtaking view while coasting downhill shared in HD. I hope you guys enjoy watching them as much as I enjoy recording them.

Note: The video parts are a bit confusing. I'll fix this later.

Video #1: Coasting downhill from the Peak



Video #2: Coasting downhill from the last hill after Sungai Long's Toll


Video #3: Cycling through the SILK highway towards Sungai Ramal


Video #4: Cycling through the Cheras flyover heading towards Cheras Jaya

Route: Sungai Long
Riders: Zack, Farizal, Zaha, Suhaimi, Nizam and Faizol

Its a gloomy and Saturday morning. This time around I brought my brother (in Law) Nizam who’s studying in UPNM to join the ride.Zack and Farizal were there at the 1st RV when we arrived. We hit the road shortly afterwards and rode casually through Sungai Ramal, Bukit Kajang and made a quick stop at the 2nd RV where we regrouped with Zaha.

This one missed the boat. It's shot during the Meriday Ride while coasting downhill from the peak.

I decided not to do the "AudioSwap" and keep the original background sound. This way you get to share the exhilaration of coasting downhill from Sungai Long's highest peak.