High Tea at Nottingham

Drove to Nottingham yesterday, the second time this year. Our friend Amrul had invited us for high tea at his house, which he rents with a Thai and a Vietnamese friend (a mini Asean).

My wife had printed out the directions from the RAC website. It was really rubbish. I personally prefer the AA Route planner, which is way more detailed.

There was a lot of traffic on the motorways (M6, M69 and M1) and after a really stressful drive, we finally reached Nottingham. We left the M1 at junction 24 (following the RAC directions). We realised that the route was different from the one we had taken last time when we passed the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station.

Ultimately we got lost and we had to call for help. We really, really need a GPS sat nav. One of Amrul's housemates found us at the University of Nottingham's West gate and led us all the way to their house.

Amrul is a great cook. He was really kind to make some vegetarian dishes for me. Take a look at the Tiramisu he made.


Other Malaysian friends, Shah and Zarina (also PhD scholars at the University of Nottingham) also joined us later with their kids. They also brought along some goodies they had cooked up.

Delicious. We still have some left overs we brought back in the fridge.

Fortunately the way back was faster. I relied on my memory and instinct alone.

Back up your stuff online

Most people I know have experienced loss of data at one time or the other due to hardisk failure, lap top stolen or in rare cases, flash drive falling into the toilet (this has actually happened to a friend).

The solution is back up, back up and back up. Most people usually buy a external hard disk for this purpose.

However, there has been a growth of online storage services recently for obvious reasons - it has a lot of advantages over storage in a external hard disk at home. The obvious advantage is of course the ability to access the data from anywhere place in the world with Internet access.

IBackup - Online Storage Drive is one of the newest in the market. The unique feature about this service is that, this online storage account as seen as a local drive on your computer allowing you to drag-n-drop, open, edit and so on.

If you are worried about security, they have a 128 bit SSL encryption.

They have various subscription plans to suit your budget and requirments. You can even start a free trial by sending them your e-mail.

Best game guns

Updated: 7 April, 2014

Watch this YouTube video of the Top 10 all time best game guns.

A long time ago, used to spend hours playing Contra with my friends, and the Spread gun listed here at ~ 8, was my fav too.

I don't really like first-person shooter games anymore but at one time, was really into Doom.



What's your favourite?

Tags: doom contra video games guns

PDA with sat nav

Initially I had planned to buy a dedicated in-car GPS Satellite Navigation system, with my main choice being the Tom Tom One.

After discussing with a lot of my friends, I later changed my mind. It seems that it might be a better idea to buy a bluetooth enabled PDA + an add on GPS Navigation System.

I don't really need the latest PDA with GPS sat nav built in.

Any suggestions?

Article on Internet ads and SEO

I have got a lot of people interested in blogging, particularly after hearing that I made money out of it sitting at home. A lot of them went ahead and created new accounts with Blogger. I had to show how to choose a template, add links and post. However, that was the easy part. Explaining how online ads work and more technical stuff like optimizing their sites for search engines proved to be tougher.

There are numerous blogs and websites explaining all these things but I found some great short articles on the worldmarketsystems site. The site mentions that World Market Systems was founded in 2002 and currently hosts over 50,000 websites. I am not really sure as the site doesn't have any further information about the company.

Anyway, I found the articles "How to use Banner Advertising" and "How does Search Engine Optimization affect me?" quite interesting and am going to send the url of this site to my friends.

Manipur, a forgotten hotspot

Read this interesting article in the Economist online, titled "A safe house for dangerous men", about Manipur, a small state in the North-East corner of India.

This article is part of a "Correspondent’s Diary", but I am not sure who the correspondent is.

Wracked by insurgency and a AIDS hot spot, Manipur certainly doesn't sound like it is the "Jewel of India".

Tags: Manipur Insurgency India

Using dogs to detect molds

Was quite shocked when we noticed mold on the wall in between the bed and just below our bedroom window. Fortunately it is not that serious and I just wiped it with a old rag using a cleaning fluid.

Not many people realize the ill effects of mold on our health. Molds produce tiny spores to reproduce and exposure to it can result in allergic reactions, asthma, and other respiratory complaints. In our case, the mold was in the initial stages and probably caused by water leaking. The more serious mold problem are those where it is hidden inside walls and not visible to the eye.

While searching for more information on mold and Mold Removal, came across the site of this company in New Jersey.

It was quite interesting because this New Jersey Mold Company uses mold detection dogs to find hidden mold inside walls. Unique and quite cost effective it seems.