My Nike Shoes - rebirth

I have bought this shoes for last year during CNY. It was so shiningly and sparkingly new. But after a whole year of wear and tear. and countless procrastination, the shoes had deteriorated to this state.

 Stains of dirt and dust and who knows what else on the top of it. Even the swoosh logo is also stained. And with CNY around the corner, 3 more days to be exact, I decided it its time for a cleaning.

These alcohol pads are obtained from a good friend of mine which had a bunch of those that he took while doing his internship at Gribbles Pathology. As you can see. It is clearly written, for disinfection use. Perfect.

This is how the shoes look after cleaning and wiping it thoroughly with the alcohol pad. First round cleaning.

The cleaned shoe, aside the uncleaned one. As you can see the stark difference by just a wipe.

 I decided to go further with the cleaning. Next the shoes is taken to wash using detergent which greatly removes stain and also rubbing it with a brush. Some water is gently poured onto the surface to wash away the soap bubbles. The result is a very perfect and nice shoes. Rebirth.

Zodiac.pl

Today while discussing about our Site MD sending a CNY greeting, we joked about him using a template and substituting the year and its respective zodiac sign. YH suggested it the zodiac might be a $ variable.


The $ variable is a common variable in perl. So I went and developed a simple script that allows the user to check whether that particular year is of which zodiac animal.

###############################################################################

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print " what year ? : \n" ;

$year = <STDIN> ;
chomp $year ;

@animals2 = qw ( monkey rooster dog pig rat ox tiger rabbit dragon snake horse ram ) ;
$animals2 = @animals2 ;

$index = $year % 12 ;


print " $year is the year of the $animals2[$index]" ;


###############################################################################

The script uses the modulus operator , % to get the remainder of each division of the year against 12.
The index , $index is used to select which element of the array @animals2 to pick to determine what year is of what animal.


Notice the @animals2 array has been tweaked to adapt to our indexing counter $index.

My iDigi bill this month

So, few posts back , " Are they cheating my SMS usage " there is a very weird and funny SMS counter usage that I have stated. So from that day onwards I have been using WhatsApp more and more and also monitor my SMS usages.

The bill had come for this month. So far so good. No crazy SMS counters. One thing to ponder though. If a drastic reduction of SMS usages like this, wont it be even weird for the 600+ SMS usages few months back ? 


Another puzzling thing is that I have been charged 3 X RM0.50 for 3 international SMS. I have no idea whats that for. Ah well, since its a small amount, I shall let it pass then.

Like I mentioned earlier, the advantage of iDigi plans is that they provide unlimited data usage. I have used 221966718 bytes of data which roughly translates to 0.2GB. Well who cares anyway. 

1, Infinite Loop, California

Do you know that the address of Apple Inc's headquarters is 1, Infinite Loop ?


For those from non-programming background, an infinite loop is a term used to refer to a never-ending loop or subroutine that is running non-stop , hence infinite. This will cause the program unable to terminate, or unstable in a more layman term.

Apple is both cheeky and smart enough to name their headquarters like that. It is also geographically shaped like a loop with 6 buildings on the loop. Going through from 1, Infinite Loop to 6, Infinite Loop. Referred as IL1 to IL6 by the local residents.

        

                              


Even on iOS the Google Maps icon shows the location of the infinite loop, which I have boxed it with a red square to point it out. The number 280 refers to the Interstate 280 which is situated nearby.


Smart and cheeky isnt it ? 

AdSense WHY !!!!

For the third time !! AdSense rejected my application.. With nonsense or unacceptable reasons.. WHY ???

This is the first time my application got rejected : June 18th , 2010

Reason ? Unacceptable site content.

I did not post anything that violates the user agreement like porn or stuffs. But got rejected. Fine. I'll resubmit

The second time application rejected : December 3rd , 2010 

Reason ? Page type.

WHAT PAGE TYPE problems am i having ??

The latest rejection : January 21 , 2011 

Reason ? Unacceptable site content

For god's sake please look at my blog archive and tell me !!

WHICH PARTICULAR ENTRY IS UNACCEPTABLE ??

First they reject you, then they state the reason. Fine. Then they do not elaborate or state which particular problem is the cause of the rejection. How am I supposed to rectify whatsoever error / problem with my site in order to get approved ? 

DAMM !

My apps

Since I've gotten my iPhone on Oct 2010 till now, I have been downloading countless apps. Most of them free, a little minority ones paid , and about half are from apps that are freed for a certain period of time, courtesy of freeappalert

From the screenshot above , 185 Apps for iPhone and iPod touch

28 Apps that are universal , compatible for iPhone , iPod toch and iPad

And 8 Apps that are iPad exclusive.

How much apps in total ? 

266 Apps !! and a total size of 7.31GB. Imagine if I were to use a 32GB SSD thats like one-third of it gone. And if all of these apps are on my iPhone thats half of my iPhone's storage.

And guess what , the numbers are increasing everyday. Need to do some housekeeping on apps that havent been used / played for a long time.

Thaipusam , Public Holiday !! ( 20th Jan 2011 )

Well so today was a public holiday for me.
Get to sleep till 12 something.


What I did next was just watching TV , cooking lunch and updating some very large file size apps on iTunes that had been pending for days.


Was thinking to have a gathering with my long lost secondary school friends, but most of them didnt respond to SMSes and even facebook chats. Wonder did I have their old numbers or what. Well since it was too last minute decision and many of them still overseas and not back to penang, decided to delay it.


Made a facebook event page so everyone can keep track of any changes of the event. How life is made simple with facebook. Given the time and provided Im not lazy, will share how Google and its apps made life even simpler.


Since I am on facebook, might as well update my photo albums, many of which were abandoned. So went ahead and picked a few photos to add in.


I guess thats just my day.

very funny youtube personality

Recently I viewed some videos that are absolutely definitely funny.
These are made by a REMI GAILLARD.


He is sort of a prankster and have a friend record his pranks on ordinary people. I have embedded 2 videos of his exploits.


His is most known for disguising a a Lorient team player that won a competition, the 2002 Coupe de France autograph for fans and even shaking hands with the then president of France , Jacques Chirac as a player that doesnt exist.


Top 10 sports :

another funny video :

Are they cheating my SMS usage ?

I have a weird feeling about Digi over counting my SMS usages. I get crazy SMS counter every month !


Here's some evidence,

These are screen captures of my e-bill from digi. Look at that crazy amount of SMS. I went to Digi and asked their staff regarding this and apparently this is counted after the monthly free 200 SMS. Meaning I SMS a whopping 700~800 plus every month. And this is even after I installed WhatsApp ? 

For the coming month, I have set up a little monitoring of my SMS usages. If they overcharge, overcount again then i'm going to make some noise. Too bad I can only check unbilled amounts and not previous amounts that they have deleted after issuing the e-bill.

This is my account, monitoring my SMS usages. At 15th Jan 2011 my last known SMS usage counter was at 162. That means I have 38 more before they start charging me for each SMS i send. My statement date is 16th Jan, today. So, we'll see if there's anything fishy going on today.

Will update later on.

iDigi plans compared with other telcos

Continuing from the previous post,


Here's a quick comparison with iDigi plans and other telco plans. Again you can get the full table from


comparison


My blog version,

So, apart from the main difference, no bill shock for exceeding quota, the iDigi plan outshines the other telco plans too. I have no idea how they calculate the Digi Savings, but let me summarize and point out the obvious reasons.


Firstly, you have a lower monthly fee, RM88 vs RM100
Secondly , you get an even lower monthly fee during this promotion period, RM58 vs RM100
Thirdly , your monthly free SMS and MMS usage covers all networks vs same network only
Fourthly, no bill shock for usages within Malaysia, compared to 5 cents /10KB and up to a max of RM250
Fifthly , FREE calls , FREE SMS , FREE MMS to supplementary lines vs 15hrs calls , 1000 sms.


Having point out these 5 obvious reasons, there are still many that wish to stick with Telco M. Mainly due to Telco M having a better coverage and reception. Still , based on my personal experience, Digi isnt too bad for 3G browsing. There's even a video that proves this. Let me see if I manage to dig that out.

There it is. See for yourself.

iDigi plans customer review

I have encountered many friends asking me how does the plan works. I wonder they didnt ask @ Digi Counters or they are not explaining enough and detailed. I will try to clear these doubts here.


I signed up this iDigi 88 plan in conjunction with the iPhone 4 launch in Malaysia. This is the plan overview laid out by Digi. You can find it at


 digi iPhone plan


So , a quick screen capture, 

This is what they are offering and I'm going to comment on the one I'm using, which is iDigi 88.


Previously, they are offering this package @ RM88 per month, but now due to the promotion, will have a RM25 discount to RM63 per month. With auto billing, you are entitled to another RM5 discount to your monthly payment which gives us RM58 per month, as advertised.


With RM58 per month, you are entitled to 200 minutes of free calls , 200 SMS , 20 MMS and 1GB of data usage per month.


Thats it. It's that simple. What makes this package outshines the others are that area where i circled with red ink. iGet no bill shock after exceeding monthly quota, which is the FREE 1GB data. This is where many other iphone / smartphone plans fail. They charge hefty fees after exceeding the quota. Instead, for Digi, they only throttle your speed after exceeding the quota. Personally , I feel its still within acceptable speeds, meaning pages dont take forever to load. 


In my first month of usage, I used 16GB data !! 8GB up and 8GB down. For what I do not remember. But who cares because they doesnt charge extra for exceeding quota. No bill shock !

Saturday

I spend the first half of my saturday doing nothing.. Waking up at 12 something then eating my lunch. Then KH called me to go to his house to pick my present or souvenir that be bought back from Australia. I went to take my bath and head straight to his house. Later on Im supposed to head over to 1 Stop to pick up 2 bottles of her sauflon multi acidic lens solution.


Regardless of the terrible jam , I went ahead too for these 2 bottles. These 2 bottles that are supposed to be urgent but she forgot to take it from my car last night.

After that I waited for her to finish her OT and we went swimming. Then dinner then went to Sticks Bistro outside of QB Mall. What a fine establishment considering its built outside the empty spot of QB Mall.

Too bad I didnt snap a few pictures for the blog. Below are the few photos that I took from the web to show how fine it is. 

Edit: Decided not to, most photos are from blogs that are watermarked. They think they take fantastic photos and afraid that people are stealing their photos. So just google up yourself and you'll know what i mean.

Here's the link :P

Sticks Fire Bistro QB Mall

Weekends !

WW3.5 to WW4


Weekends.
Its time to enjoy after a whole week of working. Its also the time to splash out money. Haha.


What major things worth mentioning ?


Our Friday dinner at Manila's place at gurney.
The price as okay, the food's okay too except i used 2 dose of its cheesy cream sauce, which makes it sort of over-tasted / over-seasoned. Nevertheless I still managed to finish the delicious dinner. And its her treat !


Next up is watching the movie FASTER by Dwayne Johnson. He is i think, to date the most successful wrestler. Moving from " stage " acting to big screen acting. Storyline was okay, not too long or too short to keep you interested.


After the movie we went Coffee Island to play a few games of Monopoly Deal and the beans game. These games, if played too frequent will cause arguments. Better not play too often.


Reached house and on bed around 3.30AM. And I woke up today @ 6AM !!

3 of these for 0.99USD !

Yet another great buy from that fella from the previous post !

Angry Birds Seasons 

Robokill

Assassin's Creed : Altairs Chronicles 

Looks like this fella is a very reliable and genuine source of apps supplier. If he continue to give discounts like this... well... we'll see.

P/s : Hope I have time to dish out some reviews for these paid apps in the next few days.

Great AppStore deals !

I recently got to know of someone from Twitter that is selling apps at one-third the price on sale. The procedure is I tell him the app that I want and he'll provide the code for me to redeem it via iTunes. I have no idea where he get the codes but whatever, its a great deal at 1/3 price or a 66.67% discount.


He's got a reputation of having giveaways of certain big titles like Real Racing 2 and Infinity Blades. Since I have MYR10 in my PayPal, I thought why not give it a try ? The 10 bucks has also been dormant very long in my PayPal.


So I requested for Real Racing 2 @ 9.99USD with his discount becomes 3.33USD which is the equivalent of what I have in my PayPal. It was a genuine deal, he gave me the code after i completed the transaction. I went to redeem it and viola !

Nice game and graphics i gotta say ! At 3.33USD its totally worth it !

Earning money through AdSense ?

Everybody wishes to have some channels of passive income.

Google AdSense is one of the most profitable and easiest way to generate passive income through websites.


But its not easy for me.


I have applied twice for Google AdSense and have both been rejected on grounds that I am unclear of. The reasons stated are violations / ineligibility of something that I have no idea of.
I think it may be due to the low traffic of my blog.


But personally I think I should not be denied the chance, however remote it may be, the chance to earn money throught AdSense.

The origin of the name Bak Kut Teh

I saw from thestar paper today,


Looking familiar ? 

The name has nothing to do with tea ( teh )
It appears that the name originated from a village where some fella used to sell bak kut and his name was Teh something something..


Everyone called him bak kut Teh.. And so the name lived on for generations..

which one ?

which is easier to read ? 


a simple template ? 

or 


a background with images


Hmm...

Implants for my HP Mini and XPS M1330

Took the Dell Wireless Draft-N card from SS's XPS and used it in my HP Mini, in turn, lost bluetooth function for the HP Mini.. You'll see why..

This is the internal of my HP Mini. On the top you'll see the Dell Wireless Draft-N card from SS's XPS. Notice to the left of it theres a small bay. Thats where the HP Mini's original communication card bay. It is a combination of WLAN and bluetooth. At that size. Wow.

There it is, a closer shot. That module, removed and replaced with Dell's card. Originally I wanted to have both of them, but due to the lack of cables..... Unlike the XPS which have cables for both WLAN and WWAN cards even if there isnt one there. I have no idea why they intend to put a bay there but not the appropriate cables.

Earlier there was a post also mentioning the swapping of hard drive. I took the HP Mini's 7200rpm hard drive and implanted it in my XPS and replaced the HP Mini's hard drive with my XPS's lame 5400rpm hard drive. This is it.

This is how it looks like without the bay. Basically just a holder / dock thingy for the hard drive to stay still in the bay.

 

Front and reverse side of the bay. As I said , just a handle with the sticker label on top and some soft rubber cushion for it to sit nicely in the bay.

Finally, ending this post, photos of my absolutely stunning white XPS M1330.

Recap of my surgery of SS's XPS M1330

I discovered the wonders of picasa and how easy it was to transfer photos into the cloud and use them in my blog. Thus I decided to do a quick recap of the surgery, this time with photos.

This is before I started my surgery. Notice the small dent on the palmrest. Lady user huh ?

The keyboard, which I originally intended to replace it onto my XPS.

The wireless communications card bay, it is empty because I had stolen the WLAN card to put into my HP Mini which you'll see later. Those communication cables are connected to the display panel.

Voila, the display panel, 13.3 inch Dell display. Wished it was LED backlit which I could gladly steal. LED backlit displays are said to be brighter and more energy saving. This would do me good as my battery was already dying. Could only last 1 hour on power saver mode.

Further took out the heat sink assembly. Notice that SS's unit doesnt use the infamous nVidia 8400M GS as the heat sink assembly doesnt have the pad for the gpu. It uses the integrated video card. Still , didnt understand why her motherboard failed.

Closer look @ her processor. Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 2.0Ghz 667Mhz FSB. Wonder if its clear enough to be seen here.

Overall view of the essentials , the CPU and the RAM on the motherboard. I stole her 2GB RAM and replaced it with my 1GB RAM. Why i keep it there ? Because I lack space for keeping RAMs so just put it at where a RAM should belong.

Midway into my surgery, where everything was there. Dont mind the iPhone, left it there accidentally.

Items there were the display panel , the main unit ( motherboard , optical drive , etc ) , the keyboard , the touch panel and the heat sink assembly.

One final step was slotting this clip back in. Operation successful. Again, a big thanks to SS.