What do you do when you have something which is beyond repair?

I recently stumbled upon an old digital camera which was previously deemed missing. For many many years, this little camera lay dormant in a box somewhere in the office. 

Unfortunately, it was a goner.

But it had served us well over the years. So, instead of just chucking the entire unit in to the trash bin, I decided to open it and have a peek inside.

A few screws later…. this is how it looked it. The back cover came off, revealing the motherboard and the LCD screen.

After removing it from the ‘outer casing’.. this is how it looks like. The lens assembly, the cylindrical flash capacitor and the SD card slot. At the bottom of the lens ‘barrel’ I presume is the little motor which either focuses or power zooms the lens.

From the other side, you can see the flash unit and the round black thing is the speaker. Just below the flash is a little white/greyish pimple like thing which is the focus assist lamp.. or rather LED. The extreme left is the optical viewfinder… something which you do not get on the latest compact digicams these days.

This is the back of the lens assembly. The little hole is where the light comes through the lens and hits the sensor.

Speaking of the lens. This is quite an interesting find. There’s only two aperture setting on this digicam. Big… and small.

And here comes the interesting part… the sensor.

This is the sensor.. on the motherboard. The blueish glass sitting on top of the sensor is some kind of a filter or protector. I am not much of a camera hardware tech guy. haha. If I am not mistaken.. that’s the low pass filter. I am not sure. But.. moving on…

A perspective view of the sensor.

This.. ladies and  gentlemen.. is the sensor. Fully naked and exposed. Interesting colors eih? This is the 1/2.5” sensor usually fitted into standard point and shoot cameras.

This is the 1/2.5” sensor in comparison with a 10 sen coin. In comparison….

… the 1/2.5” sensor next to the LCD screen, which.. is very similar in size to a full frame 35mm sensor. Don’t ask me why I do not have a real life 35mm digital image sensor as comparison. I do not have the luxury of someone handing me their full frame digital SLR for me to dissect.

I had dun taking this camera apart. Unfortunately, I shall leave it as it is for now. I have totally no idea how to put them all back together.

Now if there’s anyone out there who have a camera or a handphone camera which you wish to dispose of, lemme know. I would love to dissect them

It was a surprise invite from a friend.

The invite was like an early, a very early Christmas present. We were to have a chance to blast down the Sepang F1 Circuit in a BMW!! I did not have much information about the event. I did not know who are the organisers. I did not know what it is for. I do not know who are the other participants. But having a chance to drive the ultimate driving machine on an international race track is not something you turn down. So early Sunday morning, I got up much earlier than my other Sundays and headed down to YT’s house. YT is the friend who invited me along.

As it was many many moons since I dropped in at the pits, YT and I wondered along the roads of Sepang but finally found the entrance to the pits.

There was a generous number of ultimate driving machines made available to the participants. But most of them are the 3 series. There was a 5 series and an X1.

It was not a matter, driving along the tracks in a 3 series would be much more fun.

YT and I were assigned to one of these, the 320d Sports. It’s a turbo diesel. And no, i was actually  not disappointed at all. I have always wanted to try out of these mean turbo diesel machines after having a little taste of it’s immense torque earlier this year as a passenger.

After a short briefing on track etiquette as well as safety stuff like how to position yourself in the car, we directed to our cars. Each car is assigned two drivers.

And we have grid girls as well. hehe

This is YT after adjustment of driving position.

And we were off!! Since ALL of us, saved for a couple, had totally no experience whatsoever driving on the Sepang track, we were to ‘convoy’ around the track.

But make no mistake, it’s not a sight-seeing convoy.

We were going rather fast!!

Especially at the straight where we literally floored it.

The turbo diesel with it’s humongous 350nm of torque kicking in at just 1750 was of great help pushing the car out from corners. Making it possible for us to hit 180kmh before we had to hit the brakes. As we were all novice drivers, we had to give way to the faster cars who were also in the track as well. This meant we had to use the inside of outside line, which meant coming out of the corners at a low speed. The immense torque was useful in this situation. Pushing the car out into speed in a short time. I like!

The instructor whom we had to follow pushed a little harder after each lap. After a while, tyres were squealing and rubbers were burning! And the traction and stability controls were working extra hard to keep the cars driven by newbies in check.

but inside the BMW. It was just like your Sunday drive to the market.

Could not say much about the tryes tho. hehe.

It was definitely fun. It was definitedly informative. We now know how far we can push our BMWs when we buy one.

Thanks to YT for inviting me.

Thanks to Quill Automobile for organising the event.

Thanks to UOB for hosting us.

Here’s a very simple and quick calculation based on the assumption that there’s about 100,000 drivers out there like me. I think that’s a very conservative number. But let’s stick to that number for now.

Each time I go fill up my car, 35 litres of fuel goes into it. I fill up roughly about 6 times in a month. Another conservative figure. This means that in one month, I would have purchased 210 litres of RON95 fuel. Assuming 100,000 people like me, we would have consumed 21,000,000 Litres of fuel a month.

Let’s see that in point form :

• 35 Litres per fill up
• 6 fill ups per month
• 210 Litres of fuel per month per user
• 100,000 users
• 21,000,000 Litres per month for all 100k users.

From tomorrow, there will be a reduction in subsidy of RON95 amounting to RM0.05 per litre.

That’s RM1.05 Million saved each month. Or RM12.6 Million a year.

Wow…

According to the Malaysia Automotive Association, we have a total of 3,749,782 vehicles registered in Malaysia from 1980 till March 2010. [source]. Ok la.. assuming half of those vehicles have been scrapped due to age, damaged or rendered not road-worthy, there’s still 1,874,891 vehicles on the road today. So my estimation of 100,000 users is indeed extremely conservative.

But just for information purposes, let’s use our newly found figure and take out 1,000,000 vehicles out of the equation. So that we can equal out those who drives less and thus uses less fuel. That leaves us 874,891 users on the road. So feed that back into my little simple equation and you get :

Savings from subsidy per month : RM 9,186,355.50

Saving from subsidy per year : RM 110,236,266.00

WOW!! Now that’s a lot of money.

Let’s see if these savings are put to good use.

Again, I am not finance guy. Neither am I an economist. I am in no way qualified to actually do any calculations like this. The above is a very simple layman calculations based on whatever I remember from my Form 5 Math classes.

I may have even misinterpreted the tabulated figures on the MAA website. HAHAHA.  Maybe someone out there can tabulate a better and more accurate figure.

Cheerio!!