Gifts to end the year on a happy note

Thanks to my two sweet colleagues who gifted me these, even though I am in office still on new year's eve, I still feel blessed and happy ^.^

Thank you, J and M! :) bless you two!









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

How to place a Facebook comment box in your Blogger blog

Everybody is on Facebook nowadays, so it will be really useful if instead of using Blogger's built-in commenting system, you allow your user to post comments directly to your Facebook profile instead!

Facebook has made it really simple actually, just follow the steps I describe below, and you will have your own Facebook commenting box in no time ^.^

• First, register your website at the Facebook Developer page (Setup your Website URL)
• After you have registered successfully, you should see a page that tells you what your AppID is
• Next, go to this page to get the "Comments" code. (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments)
• Click on the "Get Code" button which will then show you a popup window with code to paste in your Blogger template.
• Copy and paste this code in Notepad because before you paste it into Blogger, you will need to replace the word AppID with the number of your actual AppID
• Go to your Blogger template, and at the place where you want the comment to appear, copy and paste the code
• I placed the code just before the ending of my second in the Blogger template code
• Save the blogger Template.

Tada, you got the Facebook comments box out already ^_^

ST1007 Topic 1 Done!

 

Phew. Finally I have managed to complete the slides for my first topic of my new module after one entire week at it.  My progress is SO SLOW ~+~

BlogThis!

Been looking high and low for thisBlogThis button to drag to my bookmarks toolbar on Firefox.

^_^

Second gift for today

From my dear colleague who just came back from Phuket ^_^

Mun Yee

 

I love you girl!

You are da best! ^_^

Thank you for your lovely X’mas card!

Family-Friendly Hotels in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

 

We just came back from a 2 days 1 night trip in Johor Bahru from 16 Dec to 17 Dec, and spurred by the positive experience we had, we are thinking of making another trip there too! ^_^

I really love the experience of exploring new places and new hotels, so though Mutiara Hotel was a great place to stay,  I want to try out a different hotel for the upcoming trip!

But with two kids in tow, we have to be rather selective in our choice of h0tels.  Did a quick research, and here are some quick evaluations of the hotels in the JB area which

	Hotel	Price	Locality	Remarks
1	New York Hotel		22 Jalan Dato Abdullah Tahir Johor Bahru,	Does not cater to more than 2 adults per room
2	Crystal Crown	RM 195.00		Allows up to 3 adults per room but must pay for extra bed at 45RM
	Hotel Selesa			Does not seem to cater to more than 2 adults per room
	M Suites			Has suites at
	Naza Hotel			Has Premiere Suite with twin double beds
	Thistle Hotel			This hotel looks very nice and has good reviews but sadly, it does not seem to cater to more than 2 adults per room ~.~
	The Zon Regency			This hotel is right beside the sea and has WIFI ^_^.  Not sure if they have rooms with twin double beds but they have something called Club Suite which might accomodate a family of 4?
	A-Vista Melati			Standard 1 double bed + 1 single bed. 1 minute walk from KTM station according to the link.
	Okid hotel			They have one configuration with 1 double bed and 1 single bed.
	Suria City			Limited room types (One Double bed or twin single beds)
	Embassy Hotel & Service Apartment			They have a Two-Bedroom Suite with two bedrooms, published rate is 390RM for this
	Seri Malaysia			They have only one room type! Called Family Room and this features one double bed + 1 single bed.  Location is in Larkin, so its 10 mins walk to the bus terminal.
	Hanta Satu			This is a Malaysia “guesthouse” or budget hotel but it has a “Family Room” configuration at 140 RM which sleeps 4 Doesn’t have a website
	GoodHope			Got triple sharing (3 single beds)
	Grand Hallmark			Limited room types (One Double bed or twin single beds)
	Dorsett Johor			From the pictures, it looks like they have this configuration of one single bed + one double bed though the website says both are single beds.  WIFI enabled.
	Tune Hotel, JB			Twin rooms have one single bed and 1 double bed. This is near Danga City.
	Eurorich			Family Suite A offers two double beds. WIFI Promotion rate up to 31 Dec 2010 is 180RM Location is a little more north-bound though, 15 mins away from main JB City Centre
B	Tiong Nam Hotel			Surprisingly, this budget sort of hotel has WIFI and has a room configuration to sleep 3 persons ~.~ Doesn’t have its own website, but here are some links that have more information on it: Laterooms.com TravelBlog LetsBookHotel
B	Rose Cottage			Budget hotel with WIFI too! ~.~
BO	Kozi Hotel			Family room with WIFI: 138RM nett. In Skudai
	Hotel Grand Far East			Apparently, it has an Executive suite which sleeps 4, more info at activehotels.com. WIFI. Photos of the hotel From hoteljohor.com
	TS hotel, JB			Twin room which has 1 single bed + 1 double bed. WIFI.
	Hotel Grand Paragon			It has a Junior suite, Family suite and even 2 bedroom apartments but otherwise, the lousy website doesn’t offer much information about each configuration!
	11@Century			It has a configuration of 1 double bed + 1 single bed and also a suite.  But no other information was available at its website
	Grand Paradise Hotel, JB			Published rates look quite ridiculously high
	Puteri Pacific			The standard rooms do feature those standard one double bed + one single bed configurations I think, but they also have the suite room types with separate bedrooms.
	Grand Blue Wave			Family suite with two bedrooms
	Mutiara
	Kingston Hotel			WIFI. This hotel is near the Second Link.  Has a family room too.  More info here RM158
	JB Central			Has standard twin with 1 double bed + 1 single bed and extra bed at RM40. The location is good. But read the reviews, they were not so good ~.~
B	Aspen Summer Hotel			Facebook page One double or 2 single beds kind of configuration
B	Heritage Hotel			Can’t seem to find any info on it except from this Google Map link. But gosh, it is damn near the CIQ!
B	Great Wall Hotel
B	Hotel Aromas
B	Yang Tze Hotel			WIFI. Has a family suite to sleep up to 4. More info here
B	Hotel  Time			Has Family room that sleeps up to 4 with WIFI. RM108 only ~.~ but far from city centre apparently.
B	8 Days Hotel			Boutique Hotel with WIFI. the Premier Double room can sleep up to 4 More info here
	Swan Garden			At Masai. Sleeps up to 2 persons at most. More info here.
	Jomi Homestay			Can stay 2 adults + 2 kids. Info here

CanonScan 3000ex installed!

Oh gosh, I am so happy because after countless attempts to get the damn thing working since Apr 2010 when I first got my laptop,  I can finally scan with it!

First, what I did was to remove the existing driver from my OS, and tried to connect it again to see if the scanner would be automatically detected and the driver  installed correspondingly.

At least, this is how it is supposed to behave, according to the Microsoft Windows 7 Compatibility List here!

Unfortunately, my scanner and OS doesn’t seem to agree with what Microsoft says on it website, so I Googled for the keywords “Canon Canoscan 3000EX USB Scanner driver windows 7” and found this link to download the actual drivers with ScanGear and the Twain driver (dated 19 Oct 2009).

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/scanners/canoscan_series/canoscan_3000ex

And yup, after installing the drivers, when I reconnected the USB cable to my laptop, lo and behold, I got the highly-yearned message “Your driver is successfully installed”.

Happiness! ^_^

I can finally start scanning all my old hardcopies of photos back like this one taken in 1999 at Suntec City.  ^_^

Red Ribbon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KSL City is a new shopping complex in Johor Bahru and “Red Ribbon” is one of the interesting shops I spotted on our 1-day trip there.

 

“Red Ribbon” specialises in selling wedding flavors and couple gifts and here are some of the quaint products sold in the shop.

 

 

Us

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Me with bandaged ear, gonna see Dr Kao for review tonight.

Edison attended a calculator workshop at school today, got this Sharp calculator free.

Fleming had his violin level 2 exam and played 4 songs. He told me he got a chocolate for playing well :)

The social network

Facebook addict is going to watch "The social network" 

Thanks to dearest NRZ – my hero!

 

Two days ago,  there was a power trip at my office and that incident became the cause of my troubles this morning.

For one whole morning, I could not connect to SQL Server 2008 Management Studio because my msdb (which stores SQL Server jobs) was corrupted.

The error message was:
”Database 'msdb' cannot be opened. It has been marked SUSPECT by recovery. See the SQL Server errorlog for more information. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 926)”

I called my expert NRZ straightaway of course and complained to him about my problem.

Of course, NRZ  came to my rescue immediately and started Googling for solutions to help me.

At 11:08 am, he sent me his first link, which required working in cmd mode. Tried the instructions, but it just didn’t work!
http://sqlplanet.blogspot.com/2008/07/recreate-corrupt-msdb-database.html

At 11:25 am, he sent me yet another link which was using the SQL Server Configuration Manager in GUI mode.  Still didn’t work :(
http://rip747.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/rebulding-msdb-in-sql-server-2005/

At 12:11 pm. problem was still unresolved, so he sent me a third link.  Unfortunately, that still didn’t solve the issue.
http://paradisj.blogspot.com/2008/08/sql-server-error-detaching-msdb.html

After these numerous attempts and my urgency to get the SQL Server working so that I could work on my system, I told him I wanted to give up and just reinstall the whole SQL Server.

NRZ told me not to give up yet.

At 12:25 pm, he sent me another email. Attached to the email was a copy of the MSDBData.mdf.

And that proved to be the saviour of the day because when I copied and pasted this file to override my corrupted one, everything started to work well miraculously!

Thank you NRZ for patiently helping me with this problem today, my darling SQL DBA expert! :)

Our first Apple product

NRZ's colleague, Choon Huat got a free ipod Touch when he bought his Macbook Pro and he was trying to sell it off on EBay. By fate, he did not manage to close a deal with a buyer who bidded his item for $228 because the buyer later backed out and said he wanted to buy it at $218.

NRZ told me about this on Tuesday 04 Aug, and asked me if I was interested to buy it.

Well, sure sounds a tempting offer, but I was debating about it for a night because I didn’t see myself really using it often.

But it was such a tempting offer, finally, I decided to take the plunge and asked NRZ to BUY IT!

Our first Apple Product!

Have been using it for a few days now, and verdict: VERY GOOD.

And this is definitely just our first Apple product, because we are eyeing the Macbook Pro and IPhone 4 next... ;)

Enable Multiple Instances of Windows Live Messenger for Multi Logins » My Digital Life

I needed this today, so bookmarking it.

Enable Multiple Instances of Windows Live Messenger for Multi Logins » My Digital Life

E

Fleming came back with this ridiculously tedious piece of homework today and I really had no choice but to help him with it.

He’s supposed to come up with about 50 words that starts with letter E and write all of them down.

He’s only Primary 1 and does not have that extensive a vocabulary yet, and even I don’t possess such a wealthy store of words either, so I just dug out this little handy Chambers dictionary we bought from the MPH fair last month and typed out the easier ‘E’ words for him.

 

 

Phew, I hope he doesn’t come back with letter F tomorrow…

Make a Spider-Lily flower for your Mom in 5 mins!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and I got this lovely ‘bouquet’ of flowers from my 7 year old son.

He ‘taught’ me how to make it, and gosh, its so super easy, takes about 5 mins only and rather fun so I am showing you the steps to do it.

First, get ready these materials: Two pieces of colored paper, stapler, a straw and a
of scissors.

Next, place your hand on a colored paper, draw out the shape of your hand and then cut out the shape of your hand on the paper.

Place the straw on the cut out shape. Fold in the paper as shown and wrap the 'hand' shape around the straw. Keep wrapping until the whole hand is wrapped around the straw and then staple it to secure the shape to the straw.

Now, use a pen or pencil and roll it around the ‘finger’s of your cut-out shape.  This will form as the ‘petal’ of the spider lily.  Keep rolling all the ‘petals’ until you get curled up petals like this.

 

Finally, do up the ‘leaves’.  Just draw out two leaves on green colored paper, cut them out and attach to the straw.

If you want, make several of the same flower and put them together in a ‘vase’ like this! 

   

Happy Mother’s Day! :)

New dress :)

from this collection

http://swivelle.livejournal.com/54046.html#cutid1

Lovely. I need an excuse to wear it :)

How to add a Facebook LIKE button to your blog!

Social Media is such a cool thing.

And now, we are allowed to place a "LIKE" button on our own blogsites or other websites as well!

I have just fiddled and played with some plug-ins to add:

1. LIKE button at the end of each blog post
2. SHARE on Facebook button at the top of the post
3. Retweet this button beside the Share On Facebook post

If you are interested to add these to your own blog / website, you can check out these links below. Some are a little specific to Blogger though.  Sorry about that, afterall, I use Blogger myself ;)

Blogger Specific
Put a LIKE button on every blogpost on Blogger
Put a share this button on blog posts
Put a RETWEET button on blog posts

Facebook Specific stuffs
Share Bookmarklet - Share ANY webpage with your friends on Facebook
Official and generic Facebook code that embeds the share on any website, not just Blogger
Generic tutorial on Facebook for the "LIKE" button

Extras
Read this for extra info, if you want to customize the button look of the Share button
If you want to allow the reader to share your blog posts on other social websites, follow this tutorial to insert the "ShareThis" button
Like button instructions for Wordpress users
Another Blogger tutorial for Like button

Drop me a line if you added these social bookmarking plug-ins to your website so I can go click the "LIKE" button there! ;)

Afternote: By the way, the Share count doesnt work until at least 3 users have shared the page. I was wondering about that, because I couldn't figure out why my share count wasn't showing, then I read it on this page. You can google for this using keyword 'Also, the count doesn't display on your page until users share the page three times. '

The weather is stifling hot right now!

热死了!

Live Linux

To try out if I can find the time

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Time to crack the brains again

Setting the MST MCQ now.

Sigh, I always need so much time to set papers :(

Didnt waste $12 afterall

Based on the recommendation of NRZ’s colleague, we placed an order for this Wii Remote Charger which seemed very attractively priced at $8.39USD with free shipping.  After conversion to SGD at an exchange rate of 0.697423 USD, it costs only SGD$12.03.  Considering the package comes with a Wii Remote Controller Charger + 2 x 2800mAh batteries, it was a real bargain.

I placed the order on 06 April 2010 and patiently waited for the package to arrive, expecting it to come within 10 to 14 days at most.  However,

Configuring ASP.NET 2.0 Application Services to use SQL Server 2008

Oh well, I keep forgetting the steps and keep needing to do this again.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/08/25/423703.aspx

To the Zoo again

View Full Album

Love my new 10x zoom Fujifim F70EXR!

Got my new compact camera at our favourite camera shop, SLR Revolution, Funan Centre this morning, thanks to the recommendation of friendly sales executive Ray Lim (rayslr.revo@gmail.com).


I tell you, the camera is really power!

• 10 times OPTICAL zoom
• automatic EXR sensor (auto detects whether you are taking a close-up pic, a landscape pic or a night pic etc)
• Credible pro-low light mode
• Superb dual image stabilization

The 10x optical zoom is really impressive. I tried it out by first taking an unzoomed photo of a construction site just opposite the old People Park's Complex and then zooming in with the maximum 10 times dial. Woooosh... the camera could detect and capture the faces workers who were at least 200+ metres away. See the photos below!

New tablet laptop! :)

Got my new Lenovo Tablet X210T notebook installed with Windows 7 just now : )

No chance to use it until tomorrow as the notebook harddisk is configured to be encrypted and the config process is expected to last at least 4 hours!

Haha, never used a tablet laptop before, even the ability to twist the screen around like this is fun for me ;). Looking forward to using the writing / journalling feature, though I heard usually tablet pc are usually on the slower side.

We succeeded in cooking an egg with the SUN!

Lesson learnt: Don’t give up till the last minute.

Just half an hour after I posted my last blog entry about how I anticipated our third attempt to cook an egg with our solar cooker will fail again, the sun started to shine its powerful rays very strongly and at 12:20 pm, we started to see some signs of the egg white starting to cook!

To think I nearly wanted to give up just some minutes ago!  Fortunately NRZ said we should eat lunch first, then pack up only after we have finished lunch.   So while he went to ‘tapow’ our lunch and I waited for him to come back, the miracle happened!

Haha, we are very pleased with the whole thing, but none more than Edison who has to bring back this contraption back to school on Thursday for his Science Project and do the experiment in front of his Science teacher and classmates.  We hope the miracle repeats that day! ;)

 

Solar cooker

The "exciting" thing about being a parent is that when your child comes back with a challenging project from school that will daunt even adults, you learn something along with them as well.

Today is the THIRD time we are trying out our "home-made" solar cookers which NRZ painstakingly constructed with assorted materials like shoeboxes, aluminium foil, black paint etc. Our aim is to try to cook a cracked egg using the solar cooker by just leaving the apparatus in the sun and using the principles of light and heat such as heat conduction, absorption, green house effect, reflection etc to enable the cooking of the egg.

As I am typing this, we have been "baking" in the sun for 40 minutes already, but the situation does not look promising. :(

Sadly, the sunlight is not strong due to an overcast sky with several gray clouds and we are not heartened by last night's evening weather forecast that thunderstorms are expected over the next few days.

So I expect the experiment is probably not going to succeed again..

But strangely, we are enjoying the process and I think this experience is probably going to be something that will stay in our minds for some time. :)

Learning his 听写 for tomorrow while waiting for the egg to cook

REGISTER

Gladiator!

Kekeke.. my first pair of GLADIATOR heels at $10.00 only!

You are my sunshine

Our sunshine boy made a sun and cloud and sang along with the song.

Look how colorful our walls are ;)

We got a new DSLR :)

Bought a Pentax K-x with dual lens kit (18-55 mm and 55-200 mm) at SLR Revolution during the weekend.

NRZ set the timer and took two family pics with it just now.