With the blog social widgets gone previously, my blog kinda feel incomplete. Blog list widget is something that I use everyday to check the latest updates from my fellow friends, just from one place. But I suddenly think of an alternative for this. Instead of having this on my normal page for blog entries, let’s make a dedicate page for it. It won’t intefere with the loading time on my blog. You can find it here.

Nice. Google Friend Connect and Feed Feeding Blogroll is back. But one list thing that I’m still cracking my head on. The excerpt of the blog is only shown in the form of tooltip when I hover at the link for the latest entry. Why can’t it shows normally as text?

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It’s been 2 and 1/2 week already that my blog is running on Wordpress. It was a very hard decision, where I lost all friend connections that I had on previous Blogger blog.

How I’ve been enjoying using widget based template for my Blogger blog before,

and the good news is, Wordpress is also supporting widget driven template. I’m just so glad that the template that I’m using previously offers widget capable template.

I tried making my Wordpress blog to be having the same features that I had previously. The 2 features of blogger that I like is the Friend Connect widget that allow visitors to Follow our blog, and the Blog List widget that shows the latest updates from the blog that I follow. Google Friend Connect is available to be used on Wordpress, and I managed to find a similar plug in that does the same thing as Blogger’s Blog List widget, but the problem is, these 2 widgets really slow down my blog’s loading page tremendously. Sometimes the page just got stuck and I have to refresh the page several time before the whole page is display. And with a heavy heart, I have to make this difficult decision again to deactivate these two widgets.

Now my blog has no connection with the fellow readers. Sigh!!

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Was visiting Maxis website earlier just to check my phone bill, only when I noticed that the iPhone 3Gs is opened for booking already.

As I mentioned in my previous entry of iPhone 3GS, I kinda wondering on how Maxis will price this. But before that, lets look again at the price that I have to pay last time when getting iPhone with 24-months contract under iValue 1 plan.

And this is the same plan for iPhone 3Gs. Darn. Just RM100 extra, you get newer faster iPhone with double the storage (32GB). But this is what I expect already, and it always like that for Apple products. So I don’t really feel quite bad about it, but still, RM100 extra for faster large storage iPhone. (Darn again)

Lets just wait a few weeks, I bet there will be another campaign of trading your old iPhone 3G to get the newer iPhone 3GS ;)

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This is actually a long lost draft post that I just found from digging my draft folder. Didn’t really know why I have kept it there for quite sometimes.

In the past, I have blog about planting grass for my cats. But the kit given usually is quite small. So I decided to plant grass at larger scale this time. So I get the following garden pot and soil from Carrefour.

This is the compressed soil and seed given in the grass kit that I bought.

First, I need to prepare the pot,

by putting as much as soil in it.

I don’t really want to waste the compressed soil that comes with this. So I get a saucer of water.

This is how the compressed soil looks like.

Once I place that in the water, it expanded twice its previous size.

Not the soil is ready to be used.

So next, I sprinkle the seed on the soil that I prepared earlier in the pot,

and after that I cover the seed with the compressed soil.

And after 1 week, my cats are ready to enjoy the grass ;)

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I just finished downloading Full HD 1080p IMAX Coral Reef Adventure (again, courtesy of my beloved friend – Mr. Torrent), and it is really a time for me to enjoy the content on my HDTV.

But it seems that I’m not the only one enjoying this. There’s a silhouette of something else in front of the TV.

Lets turn on the flash on my camera. Oh. It’s Oyen. I don’t blame him. The image of fish on this TV is so realistic, just like looking through the window of aquarium.

Oyen is still fascinated by the fishes dancing around on the TV screen …

… and still, he can’t take off his eyes of the TV screen.

Ebot joins Oyen after that, and the same thing happened to him.

Ebot. That’s not good. No scratching of my HDTV please.

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Been invited by a friend of mine, who is a teacher at Sekolah Kebangsaan Puchong Utama 3 to attend that Fiesta Ria held by the school. It’s been ages since I last attended this kind of event. As far as I remember, I was still in primary school that time when I last attended something like this,

Some of the crowd that we have today. Well, the theme for this kind of event is to bring the parents, student and teachers together. You see so many kinds and behaviours of kids at school, and the same goes to parents.

Let’s look at what they have here. As stated in the bunting, there’s inflatable playground.

Flying fox is quite popular too amongst the pupils here. There’s one kind after another, non stop that flying down the cable.

If you are thirsty or hungry, you can find drinks and foods almost everywhere.

And this game has received quite extraordinary attention from the crowd. It’s RM5 for 3 times throw. I wonder how much money that the teacher is making out of this ;)

And I guess the highlight of the day is the performance by Akhbar and Yasin.

Anyway, it’s kinda fun tough once in a while to break away from my normal norm of spending the weeked.

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My journey of getting into HD world started here, and as always, more and more things need to be added to your system to make it somewhat complete. Immediately I have the two following additions that I want to make.

Addition 1
Internet is the source of many videos, and I’ve been downloading them a lot on PC, and some of them are really high definition. In the past, I’ve been using my Xbox to stream video files from PC to TV.

And later after that getting abigs Multimedia Player.

But the 2 methods only can output SD (Standard Definition) video. I somehow need to get something that is capable of outputing HD video.

Addition 2
PC and TV are two different world in the past, only until recently. Most modern HDTV now has PC input port at the back. And the term Home Theatre Personal Computer (HTPC) emerges. Imagine while you are watching your favourite movie on your big screen TV, the landlord suddenly calls you of the overdue rental payment. It would be nice just from the comfort of my sofa, I quickly go on to Maybank2u.com for money transfer, right on the TV itself.

This is what I want too. Remember the Power Logic chassis that I ditch away last time since I get a new Cooler Master Chassis?

This is just the perfect time that I will make use of it.

With the above 2 things, that bring me to Low Yatt again, for another round of shopping.

The first thing that I get is WD TV HD Media Player. This thing has received a very good review for your high definition multimedia needs.

This is not actually a hard disk media player, any USB hard disk can be connected to this – as what the marketing tag for this says – Turn your USB drive into an HD media player. Time for unboxing.

These are the contents of the box.

And this is the unit itself. Being a HD multimedia device, the HDMI port is a must. But there are also RCA output jacks in case this needs to be used on older TV.

The remote controller is rather tiny. As using remote controller is the only way that you can control WD TV (there’s not buttons on WD TV itself), I can’t really afford to lose this.

Next, additional HDMI cable is needed, and trust me this thing is not cheap. Well, I tried to get the RM20 one from Carrefour, but it turned out that it doesn’t work on WD TV. I’ve been reading an article on CNET HDTV World that it doesn’t make a difference of using cheap or expensive cable. But how cheap is cheap?

Even though I’m just getting the RM65 one (compared to Philips one that priced RM480, and Monster Cable that is ridiculously priced at RM800), the cable feels quite high quality already, with the mesh wrapping around the cables.

Next is the motherboard for the Power Logic chassis that I have unused from the last time. I have Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB DDR2 RAM lying around somewhere. Since this is for HTPC, and not for gaming rig, I’m just getting a cheap entry level motherboard. Furthermore, this will only be used for internet surfing and movie playing on the HDTV. It doesn’t need to be that high end.

And here are the content of the box.

Being an entry level motherboard, you cannot expect that I will have 7.1 audio jack, digital audio jack and more USB ports.

Even though the motherboard has VGA port on-board, but connecting this to HDTV won’t really give a good visual. Therefore, I get this very cheap, RM125 entry level PCI-e VGA card – Sapphire HD 4350.

And here are the contents of the box.

Even though being quite cheap, but this VGA card is not shy of connectors – VGA, DVI and even HDMI port is there. This would be perfect – connecting it to my HDTV using HDMI cable.

As I get more things to be connected to internet (my Blu-Ray Disc Player is also connectable to the internet for the firmware upgrade and BD-Live feature), really need a switch for this. This 5-port D-Link switch is quite cheap too (RM45)

And here are the content of the box.

Well, it’s going to be a busy weekend again this week, which I’m really looking forward to ;)

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