Water filter

I want to write about water filter topic for quite sometime, but due to my laziness, until today I finally started to write something. I hope I can cover the important info in this blog.

First of all, Bolehland water filter price is way too much expansive if you compare to other country. Secondly, most of the famous water filters like Nesh, Diamond, etc are without any certificate or comply to any recognized standard. By the way, if you are those suppliers, please don't spam my blog; if you agreed with my opinion, then thank you, else, I hope you leave this blog quietly.

Lets talk about standard first. When we want to know until what level a product can performs, we refer to NSF standard. There are many standard published by NSF, but we only concentrate at few related.

NSF 42 is the most basic standard for water filter. It only cover the aesthetic effects of the filtered water, e.g. chlorine removal, taste, appearance, and odour claim. Basically this kind of filter is quite useless if it is installed alone.

NSF 53 talks about health effect of the water filter. It is used to measure how good a filter can filter contaminates that may pose a health risk. So, it is a must for your water filter system to tested or certified to this standard.

NSF 55 is for UV system. UV is used for disinfection, unless you plan to drink the water direct from the pipe, else, just boil the water will do.

NSF 58 is for RO system. RO is one of the most clean water that can be produced using filter. But one of the drawback of RO is that it waste lots of water. Usually if you input 1L of pipe water into RO system, it will only produce around 0.7L of clean water and the balance are wasted. So, if you plan to use RO, please remember to design a storage tank to keep the waste water for other usage like irrigation.

Now you understand the standard, then lets see what we can do.

Lot of people nowadays will install a whole house water filter system in front of their house. I'm not very sure about the price but I believe is somewhere around RM1k or more. If you are a poor engineer like me, then you can follow my way to install you own whole house water filter system.

First, buy one or two water filter housings like the following photo.

I personally recommend two units cause I'm a bit kiasi. Then go to your incoming water pipe, find a suitable place after the flow meter and install the filters. Please remember to use portable water grade of piping like HDPE or stainless steel, remember don't use PVC, it has been banned due to the hazardous of the material.

Once you have installed the filter housings, you need filter. There are lot of filters sold in the supermarket and hardware shop. I had tried 5um filter and it is quite useless and recently I found one of the best water filter sell by Living Depot near my house. The brand is calls GenAir, and it is a 1um filter. The unit is very solid as compare to those other filters, and the price is reasonable, RM3 per unit.

As you can see, the filter is covered with mud. And this filter only been used for 1.5 month.

I cut the filter and found that the inner of the filter is still clean, which mean the filter has done it job to filter out the unwanted substance. I strongly recommend to change filter once a month and please don't wash the filter and reuse, it is useless to install a filter system but you didn't change the filter regularly. This is most of the Bolehland people culture to pay extreme high price for a basic filter system and never change the filter until they change to a new system.

Mud from the filter, don't ask what is that.

Ok, once you have the basic whole house filter system, the next thing you have to do is to get a good water filter system for your drinking water. Panasonic water filters are good choice. The price of the unit and the filter is quite reasonable and you can get from most of the places.

As for myself, currently I'm using a filter system from USA call Instapure, but going to change to a more higher standard product from USA also. Will update you once I got the filter. 

    

I'm sorry

I wish no more Mickey come to my house.

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Please leave the Internet alone!

The pumpkin's story

Long long time ago (about 2 months back), I bought a pumpkin for my daughter to mix with her rice cereal. I saw some seeds and suddenly I got an idea to plant my own pumpkin. If you, the reader, think I want to save money to buy pumpkins, then you may try to do it also. I had planted few fruit trees and I believe the money I spend for the tree and the gardening accessories can let me buy tonne of fruit, so far the cheapest way still goes to the supermarket and get the fruit you want instead of trying all these hard works and time to wait for the fruit to grow.

Anyway, back to the story. The seeds sprout after two days and it grows with tremendous speed. If pumpkins can communicate each other, the earth will be conquered by them in no time. They are aggressive, their vines will attack any plants that stop their way, and they require a huge space to grow. So don't try this at home if your garden is not big enough.

After two months of growing, last week I started to spot few female flowers start growing near the vine. But, the problem is there is no male flower spotted :(

The female flower bloom yesterday morning and I couldn't find male flower near by.

This morning, the flower close her shop liao. Not sure she got pollinated or not.

At the same time, I spotted another female flower. I think it will bloom by tomorrow.

So, now I got another female flower is waiting for her prince to come. God, please give me a handsome flower by tomorrow to make my pretty flower pregnant, ahmen.

Why Google Nexus 7?

We all start from the simplest yet powerful Google search, then Google shakes the world by offering the user gigabyte of email service, from that moment, Google is everywhere. Android proven is a wise step by Google to penetrate into everyone's life, with 400 million devices and 1 million activations each day.

They why Google wants to jump into tablet war?

Look at year 2011 financial report. Google announced in its Q4 2011 financial report of $2.71b profit with $8.13b revenue, while Microsoft announced in its Q3 2012 financial report of $6.37b profit with $17.41b revenue. Then how Apple performed? Apple announced in its Q1 2012 financial report of $13.06b profit with $46.33 revenue, almost 6 times what Google has earned.

Even though Android phone is everywhere, but the phone is always a phone. The screen size can only good at reading sms, playing games, Facebook and YouTube. When the application needs bigger screen, e.g. read book, magazine, watch movie, only tablet can perform the work better. Google released Honeycomb to hope to overcome the shortage of phone, but android tablet's put a lot of people's foot away. Well, you can say China's tablet is cheap, but it's useless with all cut cost material, not to mention the lousy or not support at all from manufacturer, actually you don't even know who is producing that tablet.

With the new Google Play that include books, magazine, movies and music, Google needs a bigger screen device to push the market. So, here come the Nexus 7, a cheap but up to standard product that can penetrate the market of the tablet. Apple has been sitting there enjoying too much of sales without a proper and competent competitor that able to threaten them.

Steve Job is a genius, he saw what others can't. Google is mixed of the creator and business man, and Microsoft is purely a business man. Who will eventually win the tablet market, let's wait and see.

The battery myth

Yesterday when I went to buy camera with Sam and as usual the sales person advised the user to charge the battery for at least 8 hours before first use. Almost all the seller will advise you the same thing.

So, what is real reason behind this first time full charging advise?

Back to long long time ago, when mobile phone was introduced, the rechargeable battery technology started from Nickel Cadmium. One of the major flaw of NiCd battery is that it has "memory". If you charge the battery until 80% and stop, then the battery will assume the 80% is the maximum charge that the battery can hold. Same happen to discharge, if you discharge until 20% and then start recharge it back, then the battery will remember that the 20% is the zero charge of the battery. Therefore the total charge that a battery can hold and supply is getting narrow and narrow if the battery didn't charge until full or didn't discharge until empty. That's why the seller will advice the user to charge their battery until maximum before first use, normally 8 hours or more.

However, gadgets nowadays are usually equipped with Li-ion battery instead of NiCd and Li-ion doesn't suffer the memory effect which NiCd was suffering. You can actually use the battery immediately without charging it and you do not need to charge it for 8 hours for the first time. Most of the gadgets are now equipped with auto-cutoff charging circuit when the battery is fully charge, therefore, you just need to plug it into the power socket when the battery is flat and the charger will do the job for you. But, if the charger does not has cutoff circuit, then you need to use a timer to disconnect the charger to avoid overcharge which will eventually spoiled the battery or worst, explode.

One of the drawback of Li-ion is that it can't be over discharged. If the battery has been over discharged, for example the battery has not been used for few months, then the battery will no longer able holding any charge.

So, next time you can tell the seller that this 8 hours initial charging is no longer valid for Li-ion battery.

Chrome for iOS

Yes it's true! Just open your app store to get it now.

Google I/O 2012

It's just over, and hello Jelly Bean, hello Nexus 7, hello Nexus Q, hello Project Glass, hello offline maps, and hello Android's Chrome.

I personally are more excited toward Nexus 7 and offline maps. An USD199 tablet with latest hardware is kinda attractive to gadget mania like us. Offline maps is actually the most environment friendly design, at least it save some power to connect to the server to download maps info over the 3G or LTE. Now the phone battery can eventually last more longer if you are road blind like me.

Look at these big IT player, Google, Apple and Microsoft, they are non-stop giving us waves of new ideas and products. I believe they can't stop, unless they planning to close down their operation and go back kampung to plant banana.

So thanks to them for all the ideas and also sucking our hard earn money for their hard works.

KL Marathon 2012

So, I finally went to this marathon alone again, fanshu and cutebanana is flying me airplane as expected. I finished the race in 1hr27minutes, quite a poor record. Few factors, I can think of.

First, I haven't been practicing much this time, I only started since a month ago and I know it is insufficient.

Second, I didn't sleep since yesterday and go straight to the marathon. Yesterday was a busy day and I reach home around 12 midnight and after settling all the things, I start to lay down on the bed around 1 am and I just can't get myself sleep. Didn't know whether I slept or not, but 4.30am I start to prepare myself to go for the run.

Anyway, the main reason is that my left leg KOed at 9km and I finished the balance 1.6km by walking only. Seeing all those lenlui running passing by me make me want to cry T.T, and my sweat is helping me to cover my hurt heart, and not to mention a almost 60+ aunty potong me at around 10km T.T

Talking about my left leg, I only remember when I was young, very young that time, I believe is around primary school, I got a very bad fall down and I hurt my leg. And after that incident, when I stand up from the squat position, my left leg will make some sound. And I make it worse after running for 21km marathon last few years. Since then, my left leg always giving me problem.

My next race will the King of the Road on Sept. I think I will skip this one first. Need to monitor my left leg first before I go for another run.

By the way, yesterday is the dumpling festival and hope it is not too late to wish everyone a happy dumpling day.

My new toy

Almost 10 years I left my microc toy behind. I think it's time for me to dig it out and make something great.

If you like to know what is this, you may go here. If you would like to get one, then go ebay. The original is slightly expensive, you may get those produce by other manufacturer since it is open-source project. Sorry to say that Bolehland seller sale with damn high price, just get one from international will do.

Today, what is the colour of your shirt?

Black is the only colour I will wear today, to condolences to the death of press freedom in Bolehland.

428 A day to remember

We finally being there as promised.

The cloud race just began

With the introduction of Google drive since yesterday, the race of clouding has began.

If you are Google user, just activate your drive service and install the app into your favourite Windows or Mac or android. iOS user have to wait for a little longer.

I don't know how secure is these clouding service offer by Google drive, Skydrive, iCloud, Dropbox or Box. So always be safe, never ever put any sensitive document on internet and your phone, especially your own shoot naked photo or hamdai, you never know how deep those hackers can go.

Anyway, we have to accept that the IT world is changing, and if you don't follow it, you will be leftover there.

The test is over.

Recently Nokia announced that their smartphone beta test is over. They even claimed that if you start using smartphone since 2007, you are part of the white mice.

I was once impressed with what Nokia has created, no doubt that they have created a fantastic Symbian OS, but they didn't improve it and Symbian has been used as monkey making machine. In year 2010, I bought N97 mini and X6, and I really wish that I had spend more money on an Android phone, or even an iPhone. What is the point if you carrying a so called smartphone but it can only tell you that your phone memory is low and asking you to close some applications whenever you tried to launch an application. With that price of the phone, it doesn't tally with the hardware and software that you are expecting.

I saw Symbian market share dropped from 70% until few percent, and now they tell you that, hey, don't worry, our tests are ended and you can start buying our phone again. What an irresponsible statement made by a giant phone manufacture. Look back the history, when the Symbian OS got to the bottleneck, they open it and called it Symbian^3, then they kill Symbian and call the descendant Bella, then they launch N9 which is the only phone that using Meego, then they kill Meego. After that they launch Lumia and now they tell that Lumia 900 is the real smartphone created from all these tests. They have keep on using the consumers as their phone testers!

Sorry to tell you that I don't buy this idea, and in my eyes, Nokia is only an irresponsible mobile manufacturer, they are failing, and they will end very soon with this kind of attitude. Nokia will be permanently erased from my list of phone manufacturer.

Since the test is over, so do you Nokia. You may rest in peace now.

Stop Lynas

A lot of politicians forgot that government should work for people and not the other way round. So far I don't really care whether are we ruled by a bunch of morons, how these morons made themselves rich, or are we going to bankrupt or not. For me, it make us pissed with these morons politicians running the country. But today we are really angry, our government has sold our life, our future and our mother nature for their wealthness.

What is the use of a government if they are risking the human life for their own pocket? There shall not be even a single reason why the government should accept the Lynas project. Whoever allowed this to happen shall be centenced to death. If our laws have maximum punishment to the drug trafficking, then our laws shall impose the same punishment to those trafficking radioactive waste into our country. The impact from Lynas project is much more worst than drug. But today these politicians never get any punishment, they don't even want to accept the people's voices, and they still act like a king of this piece of land.

This blog is nothing to do with politics, it's about million of human life that have been traded for the Lynas project. The people of this piece of land deserve a liveable environment and that is our basic rights.

For all Malaysian, please wake up, let's use our next election to speak for us. I don't mind if we are ruled by a bunch of monkeys or donkeys as long as they don't do something harmful to risk our life.

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Support MCA (Malaysia Carpark Association)

I seldom express my political view in my blog cause I think that is very personal thing. But since yesterday, I suddenly want to support MCA, our Malaysia Carpark Association.

Hopefully when they win the next election, all my old parking summons can be canceled. Then I can park my car any place, any time and any way I like. Double parking, triple parking, even in the middle of the road. Thanks to our MCA's running dog sister, miss Jessie Ooi, you will be our hero.

Our country is ended if she going to be ruled by these morons. R.I.P. Bolehland.

It's day 15th.

Yesterday, we celebrated beginning of spring and today we say goodbye to the new year. Holiday no more, festival ended, salary finished, everything back to normal :_( Goodye new year, we going to miss you, see you in snake year.

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Welcome to the spring

According to Chinese calendar, today is the beginning of spring, commonly known as 立春.

One of the believes said that one this day, the egg will stand up. If you try, the egg will eventually stand up after few time of trying.

If you thought egg only can "stand" on this day, then you may try it on other day. Basically there is nothing to do with the day and time cause there is no extra force or gravity that lead to this phenomena.

Something about sciences of 立春. First when the sun reached geocentric longitude of 315 deg, then it is defined as beginning of spring. According to astronomy data, today around 6.20PM is the correct time to be defined as 立春.

So, finally it is dragon year although the new year is going to end soon.  

How much you have made last year?

Every new year we will start to calculate how much money we have made or earn last year cause income tax is coming to us soon. Basically, today I'm not going to ask you how much you have made or telling you how much I have made, but just to share with you how much our good friends have made last year.

Start with our best friend, Google, has reported $2.71b of profit  with net revenue of $8.13b for2011 Q4 financial's report . Next, let's see our most heated friend, Microsoft, has reported $6.62b of profit with revenue of $20.89b (2011 Q2). The our most missed friend, Apple, has reported $13.06b of profit with $46.33b of revenue (2012 Q1). Last let's see our Asian friend, Samsung, has reported $4.7b of profit with $42b of revenue (2011 Q4).

We can notice that selling hardware is definatelly earn more than just selling software, now you know why Google bought Motorola and why Microsoft work with Nokia.

Let's us see how some other companies did. First, someone that I hated most, Nokia, has reported $13.1b of sales but loss of $1.3b (2011 Q4). Motorola has reported revenue of $3.4b with net loss of $80m. The next I hated most friend, HTC, has an unaudited income of $430m, drop 22% as compare to the year before. Now HTC is going to work with IBM, I personally will not buy HTC because of its very bad history. Blackberry (RIM) has reported $5.2b of revenue with $265m income (2011 Q3).

Kodak has finally come to Chapter 11, a giant in photography, finally death in the flow of digital, RIP. The second photography company that seem to be going into history is Olympus with her $1.7b accounting scandal.   Sony Ericsson is walking into the history also with loss of $317m.

My personal point of view, Google will continue raising and she will put more effort on the hardware. I believe she will shake the world in very near future. Nokia will not die so soon and I really can't look down on Microsoft, she just too great to be defeated. Apple still alone, I have to admit that Steve Jobs has growth her up to a very strong level to be defeated in very near future. I really like Apple's idea, concentrate to make and support a best hardware instead of producing 1000 rubbish hardware with no support. I hope to see one day Android can be upgraded just like how iProduct being updated, even an aunt know how to upgrade their phone.

Ok, let's put our eyes on these players and see how they preform in the dragon year.

Happy Chinese New Year

So, finally it's new year eve, a day that we had waited for the whole year. This year Chinese New Year is definitively one of the best cause we going to have a very very long holiday, I pray hard so that no one call me in the middle of the night to go to site, ah-men.

So, this year is slightly different, cause I'm going to bring my princess to have new year eve lunch and dinner at both our parents house. Hope she can behave herself, or else I will cut some of her angpao :p

This year is dragon year, and according to the history, dragon year always a global business recession year. I met one in year 2001 when I just graduate from university. I still remember I was so desperate until I apply almost any job available in the paper advertisement and jobstreet, even a technician job. And I believe me and my wife are very lucky cause finally we got a very good offer. Me in the air-cond line and she at the water line. I resigned last year (maybe due to the unpeaceful rabbit year) and she was promoted. So, as long as you willing to work, these is nothing to scare of.

Wish everyone a happy and prosperous water dragon year, huat arrrrrrrr~~~~~~~