save $$, go green, use rechargeable batteries – Eneloop

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since my son was born, there has become an increased number of items and toys around the house that needs batteries. Some toys drain batteries really fast and the cost of buying batteries just shoots to the roof.

So, I then discovered Sanyo’s Eneloop batteries. They are rechargeable batteries that comes in standard sizes, AA, AAA, C & D. These little wonders are different from the usual NI-CD, Mi-NH in the sense that they hold their charge for very very long time. A typical old school rechargeable will lose it’s charge in a matter of a few weeks and you’ll have to keep charging them very often.

The Eneloop series only lose about 10-20% of the charge A YEAR if kept on the shelf. This means that you can have a bunch of batteries kept away, and when you need them just take them out and start using. This vs having to charge them up first before use.

Also with their ability to hold charge, it means fewer recharge cycles and longer run time per usage. Now, for most of my household needs, I use only Eneloop batteries. Though each cell costs much more than a regular Alkaline battery, but over it’s life span it take the place of hundreds of batteries I’ll never need to buy again. All it costs me is 15mins and a few cents of electricty to charge up a set of 4 AA/AAA Eneloops! (a 15mins quick charger will be required)

In Singapore, the shop I’ve found with the best prices for Eneloop products is onlineshop.com.sg. That’s where I’ve ordered most of my Eneloop batteries. The even better news, the more you buy in each order, the cheaper the unit price of the product is.

For this holiday season, I’d recommend pairing up your new gadgets with Eneloop rechargebles.

iPhone App – 1Password Pro *FREE*

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Yes! the much loved 1Password app available on OSX is now available for the iPhone and it’s free until 1st Dec 2009. So, go grab it now while it’s still free.

I’m sure it’s available at least in the US and Singapore iTunes store.

I installed it today, and found the features to be neat. It saves passwords for websites, and also you can store other personal information, like credit card details.

It has built in pin and master pin to prevent unauthorized access to your private information.

Check it out, 1Password Pro!!

iPhone App Review – Upside Down

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I was just surfing the app store and chanced upon this free app, “Upside Down”.

It’s a rather simple app, but does something really fun! You simply type in any message you like, it will automatically flip the text upside down, click on the “copy” button, and go to your SMS and paste it there.

Send out your message, and your recipient will get the message upside down! It’s a fun annoyance 🙂

Be warned though, this will work if your recipient is using an iPhone. I sent it to a Nokia N82, and only jibberish showed up. I wonder if it will work with Androids, Blackberry or Windows mobile recipients. If anyone gets to try it out, drop me a comment and let me know.

PPTP over cellular network with iPhone 3GS

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ever since I upgraded my iPhone to OS3.0, I’ve been having trouble trying to get PPTP VPN to work. Never had the time to seriously look at it until now.

My VPN end point is a Linksys WRT54GL running with DD-WRT. I know that PPTP service works there as I can connect with my notebook, even with my 3G dongle.

Initial findings pointed towards the support for encryption on the DD-WRT implementation, and it has to be forced to “none” on the iPhone. Even that didn’t work.

With the release of OS 3.1, I started to tether my notebook to the iPhone, and through that, the PPTP will fail. That stumped me! Initially I thought could be due to the NAT implementation to enable tethering.

With trial and errors, I found out that over a WIFI connection, PPTP connection will work. Did I forget to mention that CISCO based IPSEC VPN to my office network works nicely over cellular and WIFI? That really baffled me. So, there’s something that’s in place that only works for IPSEC over cellular.

Finally, I came across some forum postings that lead me to the solution. There are many other people with similar issues in Canada and USA, and for some, they are able to tweak their APN on the phone to a different one and it worked for them. Of course they needed to be on different data subscription etc… for that to work.

I’m in Singapore, and my cellular provider is SingTel. I whipped out my iPhone 3GS and compared it’s APN settings to my 3G dongle for my notebook. Wallah! they are different, even though they are both with SingTel. I swapped in the new APN settings on to the iPhone, and PPTP started to work.

So, for all those in Singapore and on SingTel with similar needs and issues, the solution is to change the APN from “e-ideas” to “internet”. And here’s SingTel’s official instructions. BTW, these instructions are generic for all data devices.

For everyone else, what I realize from this is that some services/ports are controlled by the service provider. So, just by changing the APN won’t work if you don’t have access to the relevant APN.

If you need some guide on how to set your APN on your iPhone, the official Apple guide is found here.

*update 2009 Oct 09* after changing the APN, the “tethering” feature disappears. But if I reset the “Cellular Network” settings, “tethering” comes back. Got to figure out how to enable both.

how to make your Windows PC run faster?

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I don’t know anyone who has a Windows computer that doesn’t come to a crawl after using it for about a year. The computer takes 5-10 mins, and in worse cases 20mins to boot up to a usable state.

This happens for several reasons, and one of the biggest reason is due to file fragmentation. The performance hit gets worse if your paging file (swap file) is fragmented as well.

Since nearly 2 years ago, I found a nice, free defragmentation utility on the web. Back then, it was known as JKDefrag. The idea was good and it worked by calling native Windows APIs. This means that the programmer leveraged a lot on Microsoft’s native functions to do the work. His utility just provided the brain and coordinate the whole activity.

This is a good design that the utility will not do anything out of Microsoft’s comfort zone. Meaning, all moving of the bits and pieces of the file is executed as safe as it gets. JKDefrag did not have to re-invent anything.

Now, a newer version has been released and I’ve used it. The utility has been renamed as MyDefrag (mydefrag.com) and it has a new feature. This introduces a new dimension to what JKDefrag did. MyDefrag will now optimize the files, in addition to just defragmentation.

The new optimization idea is great! It basically re-orders the files on the harddisk into zones, and depending on the type of the file, the frequency of access of the file, the files are organized into each zone. I will not go into the specifics here, so if you like to understand in greater details what is done, you may read up from the website.

I’ve installed and optimized on my desktop and 2 netbooks. The end result is phenomenal! I can actually feel that the boot up time of these computers are shorter, and general usage experience of the computers have improved.

For anyone who wants to squeeze more out of their computers, I would recommend trying this utility out.

This utility is free, and you have the freedom to make a donation to the author of the utility if you wish to. I’m in no way affiliated to this author, and I’m writing this just to share with you out there this great utility I’ve discovered.

So, if you do try out the utility, what you need to do after installation is to run “slow optimize” the very first time you use it. That basically does the initial job to re-order the entire harddisk. Be warned though, this can take a very very long time… on one of my netbooks, it took 2 days, and the other took only 3 hours. So it depends how much work needs to be done.

So, go forth and unleash some renewed performance to your computer 🙂

Are you getting MSN SPAM?

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Have you ever received strange messages from your friends on MSN, but they are not really online?

The messages seems somewhat realistic, and often comes with a link for you to click on…. one example I received recently is as below

huhuhahahah thats YOU?!? LOL! :D:D:D http://xxxxx.My-Pictures–Downloads..com/?image=DSC07819.JPG

#1 rule – Don’t Click on It!!! never click on any URL you are not sure of. If you received a message with your friend being offline, it’s a really good chance it’s not from your friend. Clicking on it will likely get you into trouble with malware.

In fact, most of the times it’s actually a malware site that’s spamming you. So the question is, how did the spammer get hold of your friend’s account? There are at least 2 possible ways.

  1. your friend has a poor password used for the MSN account, a password which the spammers were able to “guess”. Most of the time this is true, not many people will have good passwords.
  2. your friend has used a computer that has a malware active, so when he/she logs in to MSN, the malware captures the password and sends it to the spammer

So, how do we combat this? Just a few simple tips should make these go away

  1. immediately advise your friend who’s account has been compromised to change the password to his/her MSN account
  2. if you know that your password is simple, change it as well (no it’s not that it’s now compromised, it’s to avoid it being compromised in a similar fashion)
  3. it’s good practice now to have passwords that mixes numbers and letters. To make it even better, throw in a punctuation. Of course the ultimate password will also contain the 3 components plus the letters are a mix of upper and lower cases, and the entire password is at least 8 characters long. So something like “BitE2mE89$” is great! and “coffeeforme” is really bad.
  4. make sure your computer has an up to date antivirus/malware installed. If you don’t want to pay for one, you can get a free version from AVG. Free, only if you are using it for personal use. For a business PC, you need to buy one.
  5. make sure your computer is patched (updated) regularly, if windows prompt you to update, run it. It often fix problems which antivirus/malware products cannot protect you from.
  6. Patching and having an antivirus/malware product complements each other, together they cover you better.

If you use facebook or twitter, earlier in August 2009, both these websites were hit badly. As a user to these sites, you’ll probably get strange looking webpages, or perhaps slow, or nothing worked. That is the consequence of hundreds of thousands of PCs not properly maintained and have malwares running on them. These PCs were under control via the malware to attack these services. So, for a good couple of weeks, facebook was not really usable. If all computers were properly maintained with the few simple steps above, we wouldn’t have any problem. It’ll be good for facebook and the rest of us.

If you have friends and family who you feel may not know these few basic and hugely important tips, do share these tips with them.

If you have any queries or comments, just drop in a message below or email me 🙂

Diving Into Automated Forex Trading

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I came across “Fapturbo” Forex trading robot a few months back. It’s performance seemed really good and the strategy it takes looks reasonable enough. So, I took the plunge and attempted to trade with the robot.

After running it for over 2 months with demo accounts with play money, I now feel comfortable and confident enough to dive into a live account. In a few days I will fund my live account and let Fapturbo do it’s job to make me more money.

If you like to find out more about Fapturbo, please do use my referral links here or the quick link to the right of this blog.

iPhone Calendar sync with Google – comparison between activesync & caldav

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If you haven’t realized it from my previous post, I am a fan of Google. So, besides syncing my iPhone contacts with Google, I also sync my Calendar.

I don’t have a Mac (YET), and I don’t have a copy of Microsoft Outlook, so I pretty much don’t have anything I can sync with on my Vista Desktop and XP netbook. Without Google, all I can do is backup my calendar to iTunes.

So, prior to OS3.0, I have setup my iPhone to do over-the-air activesync just for my calendar. It worked great and I loved it. What really surprised me that it also took care of subscribed calendars. e.g. My wife shares her Google calendar with me, and that also syncs to my phone; I also subscribe to a public holiday calendar for Singapore, and that syncs to my phone as well.

What impresses me is that once you have more than 1 calendar sync to the phone, all the items will get color coded. E.g. my calendar items will show up with a blue dot, my wife’s an orange dot, etc… On top of that I have permissions (set in Google Calendar) to add/delete/modify my wife’s calendar and I can do all those on the iPhone as well. There’s an option for me to choose which calendar an item is for when creating it.

When I was just surfing around on what’s new and what people are doing, I came across the new feature of the iPhone OS 3.0 and also supported by Google. That feature is caldav sync, as opposed to activesync. So, what’s the differences?

In short, very few differences. I’ll list the few I know

  1. Activesync – just need to setup your main account, and everything that is subscribed to in the Google Calendar interface will show up automatically
  2. Caldav – each calendar must be added for it to show up in iPhone, so this is more tedious.
  3. The advantage here is that activesync and caldav can both be used at the same time! A lot of people will likely sync their calendar with the office calendar via activesync. By using caldav, you can then also add on your personal calendar from Google. Lot’s of feedback I read in forums is that people are really pleased to be able to have both their work and personal calendars in the iPhone AT THE SAME TIME, and still kept separate. This is one of the biggest advantage, the marriage of both protocols.
  4. One thing that is important for me is reminders. In Google Calendar, you can set to receive multiple reminders for an item. E.g. for important events, I like to set pop-up reminders 10hrs, 1hr and 15mins before the event time. The activesync protocol only allows one of the reminders to go through to the phone, however caldav will sync all through. So, my phone will alert me at all the set reminders. Now, this is of a huge advantage for me.

As you probably guess, I’ve dropped activesync totally and now using caldav. Just a note though, when I started using caldav, in my appointments, I can start to specify “second alerts”, which is great! However, if you have more than 2 alerts/reminders for an item, you’ll only see the first and last one. I have items with 3 reminders, and all 3 will pop up in the phone in due time, I just can’t see the settings of the middle one in the phone. But that’s only a minor issue, as I would not change the alerts, but if I need to, just need to log on to Google Calendar to change it.

I’ll just keep things short (relatively) for this post, may post a how-to setup caldav post in the future. The guides I found only managed to get me half way. Had to figure out the rest of it myself by trial and error.

iPhone Contacts Sync with Google – comparison via iTunes and over-the-air activesync

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Traditionally, one would sync a mobile/smart phone’s address book with a proprietary software (e.g. Palm Desktop), or via some conduit with Microsoft Outlook. In the recent years syncing with Outlook seems more popular as it’s more widely supported and it was my preferred way to transfer contacts from a phone from manufacturer A to another phone from manufacturer B. e.g. I once transferred from my Nokia N82 to a Samsung i600, then from the i600 to my iPhone 3G.

Recently I changed jobs and no longer have access to MS Outlook (it was on my work notebook), so I started searching for alternatives. Here are the options I have (in the Windows world)

  • via iTunes – sync with Google
  • via iTunes – sync with Windows Vista Contacts (or Windows Address Book on Windows XP)
  • over-the-air – sync with Google using Activesync protocol

I have been a fan of Google, and been using Gmail for years.  Little did I know, I have been shifting towards cloud computing without planning for it. This seems to be the all new popular shift the industry is heading towards. A lot of what we know now will eventually be hosted in the Internet cloud.

I decided that syncing with my Google account will likely be the best option. One advantage will be that I’ll never have to really worry about backing up my Gmail account. It’s something I trust Google to take care of. I also expect to see more support on syncing the contacts and calendar with more devices. So, this should protect future change of devices. In the worse case, I can export contacts as CSV files to be imported to other PIM tools.

Going off track a little, I tested out syncing with my Vista Contacts. Just to see what it does. The good side is that it can sync contact photos, which Google does not support. But the bad side is that when you delete contacts from the iPhone, they remain in Vista Contacts.

The real test started first with syncing via iTunes. Let me start off with what I started the test with

  • on the iPhone – I have my full set of contatcs with phone numbers, some email addresses, etc.
  • in my Google Contacts – I have some email addresses Gmail auto saved into the contacts.

I put in the config in Tunes to sync contacts with Google. Then I let it rip. The initial sync took about 10mins (I have about 1200 contacts in the phone).

When it was done, I looked through Google contacts and everything was uploaded nicely. I had some contacts with numerous phone numbers and all showed up well. Even some has custom phone types, e.g. I have a contact with a “home kitchen” as a phone type. Google accepted it as well. I was pleased.

Syncing with iTunes over a few days proved the updates and sync are working nicely.

Then, I decided to try out syncing over-the-air. It would be nice not having to remember to plug the phone to sync every other day. Any updates to the contacts will sync within minutes with “push”.

On the iPhone, I went to settings -> mail, contacts, calendars -> add account -> Microsoft Exchange. Went through the account creation wizard, and picked to only sync Contacts, keeping mail and calendar off. (side note, the server you want to connect to is m.google.com)

It prompted that all contacts in the phone will be wiped out (this was pre OS3.0). I know that my contacts are already well sync with Google already so I could confidently hit yes.

My contacts on the phone became blank, and then the over-the-air sync started. I could see contacts starting to be populated. If you scroll right to the bottom of the contacts, you could see the total count of contacts in the phone. In under 10 mins, I could see all my contacts downloaded.

Verification : the number of contacts were right, all contacts were downloaded. Then I picked up some names and check… looked fine. Until I hit some special contacts with a lot of numbers and email addresses… not everything was downloaded. Some numbers and email addresses were missing. Double checking in the Gmail interface, they were still on Google. So the sync was not perfect. After searching around, I found that it was a limitation of the activesync protocol.

You can read the actual post here. But here’s the essence of the issue. It’s not an iPhone nor Google issue. It’s a limitation of the activesync protocol.

Activesync only allows the following per contact

  • up to 3 email addresses
  • 2 Home numbers
  • 1 Home Fax
  • 1 Mobile
  • 1 Pager
  • 3 Work (which one will be labeled as ‘Company Main’)
  • 1 Work fax

So, if you have contacts with 2 Mobile (type) numbers, only one will show up after the sync. You won’t lose the other number, but it will stay at the original source. If you have custom phone types, they won’t show up either. So, this did not work for me.

One more shortcoming when using activesync is that the phone types becomes limited. The list that I used to be able to choose in the iPhone becomes limited to that listed above. It would make sense to conclude that it’s due to the limitations of activesync.

Other than the above though, the sync worked pretty well. The push updates went well and I was pleased with that as well. But since I have needs beyond just a few numbers and email addresses, I prefer to sync via iTunes.

On the 11th July, I picked up my new iPhone 3GS from my service provider, Singtel. Out of the box, I put in my SIM card, quickly configured activesync, and BAM! my contacts came in over the air. Even before I paid for it my contacts are ready for use. That was one proud geek moment :D. But when I got home, did a restore from my 3G backup, I reverted back to sync via iTunes instead.

So, in conclusion, syncing of your iPhone contacts with Google has 2 methods. You just need to pick the option most suitable for you. If all your contacts have very minimal numbers and email address, and you have a mobile data plan, go with over-the-air. Otherwise, sync via iTunes should be preferred. At when during moments where you’ve lost your contacts somehow, or you’ve picked up a new iPhone, you can turn on activesync until you can get back to your computer to sync.

Roasted Pork Belly (Sio Bak) .. Babi Panggang

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Hi Guys!!  So Jason has been encouraging me to start writing on this blog to share my journey on the newly found hobby.. baking and cooking.. yes.. it took me 30 years to realize that I actually like to cook and bake.. This started when Jason bought me an oven (Thanks Bay!! 🙂 )

Last week, I decided to make Roasted Pork Belly (yummm yumm…) , my mom loves this, so rather than buying from the hawker center why not make it myself. I went to Tiong Bahru market to buy the pork belly from Uncle A Guan. Jason’s family has been buying pork from this stall for 3 generations and Jovan (our son) seems to be liking that Uncle too :). I also dropped by the vegetable stall to buy fresh lemon grass, lemon and rosemary.

This recipe is my own creation inspired when watching Jamie Oliver make his Roasted Chicken. I thought of experimenting and it turned out to be fantastic and a totally different flavour than those you buy at the hawker stalls. And by the way, this is my second try.

The ingredients:

  • Pork Belly (I only use 0.5kg but it depends on how many people in your house)
  • Fresh Rosemary
  • Lemon
  • Minced Garlic
  • Salt & Pepper

The tools:

  • Aluminium Container
  • Satay sticks
  • Oven

The method:

the meat prepared for roasting

  1. Clean the remaining hair from the pork belly’s skin with a tweezers
  2. Insert satay stick this is manner ..“X” to avoid it from curling up when roasted. Place pork belly in the aluminum container with the meat part facing up
  3. Heat up oven at 160C top grill and roast the belly for 30 minutes (stage 1)
  4. After 30 minutes, take the belly out from the oven. At this stage it is half done. Poke the skin with tooth pick (yes.. tooth pick.. at this stage the skin is soft). Do not miss any corner of the skin as this is the secret of a perfect crackling skin.
  5. Apply the minced garlic all over the meat side (avoid the skin), sprinkle a little salt and pepper
  6. Sprinkle salt all over the skin
  7. Lay rosemary and lemon grass on the bottom of the aluminum container and squeeze the lemon. Put the pork belly on top of it with meat part facing up.
  8. Roast for another 30 minutes at 160C top grill.
  9. Remove the rosemary and lemon grass from the container. Remove the satay sticks. Turn the pork belly so that the skin face up. Dab the skin with kitchen towel to remove any water/sweat.
  10. Crank up your oven to maximum temperature and roast the skin for 45 minutes. At this stage, you will be able to hear the crackling sound of the skin.. (yum yum)
  11. Some part of the skin will get a little black but it doesn’t matter, you just have to scrape it off
  12. Slice and serve

Cross Section of the meat after roasting

The learning:

  1. On my 1st experiment, instead of grilling for 30 minutes (stage 1), I blanched the belly for 1 minute in boiling water but the skin turn out to be tough and difficult to poke. At the same time, the meat becomes dry. By grilling, the skin is very soft and the meat stays moist.
  2. You may score the meat part around 1 inch thick before grilling. This is for easy cutting when belly is done.
  3. If you want the taste of the belly to exactly the same as the hawker stalls, you should use the 5 spices (Ngo Hiong) instead of using rosemary, garlic, lemon grass and lemon.
  4. To make the belly a little tangier, you can rub Coleman’s Mustard on the meat part before applying the garlic.

The belly turned out to be very crispy, moist and the aroma was just superb. Jason and my mom love this dish, next time I’m gonna make a little more for Jason’s parents.

The Meat cut into chunks ready to be served