Swiss-style 24-hour fresh vegetables and farm produce vending machine

I was taking a quick spin through the nearby village with my daughter when we stumbled across this vending machine selling fresh vegetables, fruits and eggs. It was the first time that I saw a vending machines used to sell farm produce. Looking at the prices, they are a wee bit above those found in the supermarkets downtown, but I guess not so bad if one needs any of these items urgently and it's Sunday (Sunday is a no-business day in Switzerland; with a small exceptions all shops are closed, including many restaurants!). 

A Swiss Style 24-hour vegetables, fruits and eggs vending machine

How to make your own passport photos?

I'm fine with taking the shots needed, especially when the new rule for Malaysian passport is white background - easily done, as my house walls are all white ;). What's difficult is to get the size right for printing - this is the real pain in the neck. It was the case that I usually had to try to print a number of copies before I got the exact prescribed size.

I spent a long time looking for a tool to accomplishes this easily. I struck my luck about 2 months when I had to renew my son's passport.

I stumbled upon http://www.idphoto4you.com, and it is one extremely useful utility web site. It is so simple to use; even allows you to do some basic editing online to get the right exposure, background colour etc. For those living in expensive places such as Switzerland, every little tool like this helps a lot. I saved 80 CHF (around 80 USD) with the help from idphoto4you.com. You can too - check it out!

No that's not the photo!

The tail may be hard, but I love it / Giant Talon LTD

This is my mountain bike.

You want a superb hard tail? Look for this bike - it's a Giant Talon LTD. A model from 2012 that you could probably still find at some shops in Europe (unfortunately available only in this region).

I got it for CHF 1,400 though I told my wife it was only 800 quid. It's been sometimes now and since I have used it to the max and thoroughly enjoy the routine, I'm sure she will recognise that it's a money well spent. To be honest, there is no way, absolutely no way that one can get any cheaper price for the spec.

I don't think I can lay down a good comparison to other hard tails or even soft tails as I have not used that many and certainly not owned any before. But, one thing for certain is that I have not a single complaint about this bike. It rides well and smooth and handles all surfaces superbly - gravel, single train, soft mud, hard tarmac, you name it. The best is the comfort and ease it offers when climbing. I can only say that it's the bike for me and I will keep riding it as long as I can.

Thank you my hard tail - you've changed my life.

The tablet finder .. what a cool tool

I never really thought of checking out the solution to locate missing smart phones and tablets until yesterday when I'd totally forgot where I misplaced my Samsung Note. The initial worry was that it'd been nicked when left unattended on my desk. A colleague suggested we tried to locate it using the Samsung "find my device" tool available on Internet and it really brought a huge relief - a big blue marker popped up on Google map telling us the device was sitting in my house. It took me a long time to finally recalled how the Note got tucked safely in one of my many bags in the master bedroom - it's one of those (many!) days that I left some items somewhere and simply forgot about it later.

For those using Samsung device, better make sure than you register your device if you haven't done so. Get that user name and password ASAP so that in case you misplace your device, you could turn to this super tool. The URL: http://findmymobile.samsung.com / A similar tool exists for Apple devices. 

Mountain biking - 21 km of climb, descend, speed, control

Since after Ramadhan I had not been doing mountain biking with the regular guys - finally I had the chance today! Not wanting to miss, at 5PM sharp I hurriedly left the office, quickly picked up Lyris (that's my 2.5 year old daughter) from the nursery and shooting off fast on my heavy local brand "California" city bike to get home ASAP to change.

Precisely at 6 PM all the three of us started heading up-hill, initially on normal road then slowly turning into gravel tracks and some single trails. I should have taken some photos of the trails. A couple of them were pretty good. One in particular was covered in layers of chopped woods and branches - we were not sure of the reason, but I guessed it was a special path to train horses. It wasn't easy not to fall and it all depended heavily on how one controls the bike, not much on speed. Going down some of the semi single trails were also fascinating - and again control, balancing and braking played an important  role. With the speed going downhill, one small mistake could mean a crash and you don't want that to happen. I usually had the tendency to press the front brake too heavily when panic (and already had one crash precisely because of this); luckily all was good today.

Start to end was about 21 km - a short but certainly for enough given the limited day light.

I feel like taking a break tomorrow; or .. perhaps a quick spin alone. We'll see ...

And though that looks like me, it isn't .. 

Setting up a paid domain and hosting

I have decided to set up some paid domains and hosted web sites instead to explore the possibility of generating some Google Adsense or equivalent income. It is an old intention that never got realised properly due to serious procrastination.

I stumbled upon this site (http://www.2createawebsite.com/) that explains things very well I would say much better than many others that are simply just shit piled up nicely that is pull traffic. From the content and the way it's written there are elements of sincere intention to share her knowledge and experience. With her guide I have managed to register a couple of domains and one is now properly hosted - where it is, will have to wait; let me work on various bits and pieces before it is ready for a showcase ;)

I would suggest that anyone interested to learn more about monetizing from web sites and blogs to spend some time reading this site. It's well written with simple words and good flow.

 

How to set up Wordpress blog on FREE external hosting service

External hosting service here refers to non-wordpress hosting service - for blogs at Wordpress.org and NOT Wordpress.com. For those who are puzzled as what I'm talking about, spend some time doing a bit of Googling to find out the difference.

I have been looking for a good guide for the setup and I have to say this boy has run through the steps pretty well. Short, straight to the point, concise and easily followed. A bit of background noise but not a significant interference. Well done to him.

The link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qRdDVxyrQA, or you can watch it straight on this page by clicking on the below.

Though I have to say that you may want to pay attention to the latest interface of byethost.com that's not quite the same as shown in the video.

The steps were performed on Mac environment though I don't believe it's any difference on Windows. Secondly when you sign up on byethost, you might be required to do it on Mozilla Firefox, though I'm not sure why it's necessary.

Google Chrome fails to launch - this is how to sort it out

My work laptop runs on Windows XP (yes, XP .. almost obsolete) and last week I had my Windows profile folder corrupted for whetever reason, and my Outlook email won't start. To add to the problem, my Google Chrome also stopped to launch.

Though the Outlook issue was resolved, Chrome continued to not launch. Restarting the machine and de-installation/reinstallation of Chrome also didn't do much.

In the end, it turned out Chrome User data folder was also corrupt.

So, if you experience non launching of Chrome, 99% is due to the use data folder being corrupt. To resolve it is pretty easy.

1) Go to this folder in Windows explorer: D:\Documents and Settings\aabdulra\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome
2) In there you will find a folder called "User Data"
3) Right click on the folder and choose "Rename" from the pop-up menu
4) Rename it to whatever you like .. such as "User Data - CORRUPT"
5) Try launching Chrome again. Should work like a charm now :)
6) After that you may want to DELETE premanently the old, renamed User Data folder

... easy peasy

Rumours and being accountable of what you say and share online ..

May be there should be a world law, country laws and company laws that prevent people from distributing and sharing (and certainly creating) unvalidated news that could create havoc, worries, concerns and unstability in the related communities. I received a news cut from an online UK news portal that says the company I'm working for is cutting 3000 jobs just to later been told by the same person sending it that it was in fact a VERY old news (he himself was also tricked into believing it initially). With cost cutting exercise that's happening in the company, some clever guy must have Googled the keywords "headcount", "cut" and the company name and "cleverly" the search engine churned out a news that's still sitting on the news portal server from the past year. With the news portal page showing today's date and the news piece itself not having a separate date/time stamp, one was easily deceived into believing the news was fresh from the oven! Be careful people! - Search engine is just a machine that at the end of the day, takes garbage in, churn garbage out, and you don't be as stupid. Check, check and check again what you see and read and confirm the validity before sharing. If not sure, keep it to yourself. Adios

A pretty healthy routine

It's becoming a routine now that just before 8 PM on Monday to Thursday, I would be spending time dismantling gymnastic equipment - mattresses, bars, beams, wooden platform (don't know what the technical name for it) etc.. . It's all due to Lana joining the local gymnastic club. A pretty big deal given that she has joined pretty late (in age) and got absorbed in pretty quickly and according to the teacher doing good.

Another part of this daily routine is 1.5-2 hours mountain biking before heading to the gymnasium hall. A pretty big deal also given that it's only been three months since I first tried it out and these days 30KM is more than doable. Ending the ride with lifting the gymnastic equipment and mattresses which by the way are pretty heavy, is just a nice exercise.

So far so good and I pretty enjoy the routine. I'm not sure how I will feel comes Winter - surely a bit of stiffness given the expected less cycling. Having said this, a colleague invited to join him winter mountain biking once in a while ;)  ... we'll see

Another Eid, another year on, another family photo

It's not often that we take family photos. Not that it isn't possible, it's just simply not taking the effort. At least for every Raya occasion, we try to do this and the quality is improving - not so much of the looks of the parents rather the composition and lighting.

The following with two takes with on camera timer, a prosumer flash gun and a cheap tripod.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri / Eid Mubarak

Maaf Zahir & Batin
from: Azhan, Anna, Lana, Aryan, Lyris