Chinese New Year & Chinese Oranges. Look Before U Eat!

Chinese New Year is drawing near. When buy Chinese oranges please beware of the worms inside, look carefully! These worms are very similar to the texture of the orange and therefore can only be observe if you look carefully (long sighted person may not notice).

The Chinese government had in fact made effort to destroy hundreds of tons of these oranges and compensate the farmers for these. But however some culprit may still sell it illegally. That's why we need to be careful.

Whether the worms is harmful to the human body or not is still questionable. But generally if few numbers are consumed it should not make any harm according to doctors. It is advisable to be careful about it.

Well after looking at the above pictures my dear readers, what is do u think? As for me I think I have to look carefully before I poke all this oranges into my mouth! He! He! Normally I just poke whatever food I like into my mouth without much thinking! Ah! I think I have to be very careful when I eat this oranges from now on! So if u do see any visitors during this CNY visit examining this oranges before eating it might be b'cos of the worm inside & not b'cos they r rude!

Hemmmmm! It seem that China product is really no safe! First milk now oranges! What next? Well wishing all my dear readers a very Happy & Prosperous Chinese New Year! :)

ATM Emergency Help! Information U Should Know!

To all my dear reader I got the following information in my email:-

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse. For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would key in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.

This information was recently broadcast on TV and it states that it's seldom used because people don't known it exists.. Please pass this information to as many people as possible.

Now how true the above information is or whether it work or not, I don't know as I have never try it out. But in case of emergency it never hurt to try. I just hope that none of my dear readers got to try it out!

X-Mas Is Near…..What To Buy As Gifts?

Holiday season against & also X-mas is near and it meant gifts! You either receive or you give. Not so much of a problem if you are at the receiving end. He! He! I am sure you will be most happy to receive any X-mas gifts! Now the problem is giving. What sort of X-mas gifts to give & to buy? I am sure you want to give out gifts which are unique & most welcome by everyone.

Allow me to make a suggestion, how about giving out gift cards as X-mas gifts which are available at Gift Card Mall™? Gift cards are sort of like cash voucher but in card form which can be use in selected store to buy what you want. Now to make this gift cards unique you can custom designed it.

I am sure giving gift cards as X-mas is the best choice according to Blackhawk Network survey. So how about designing your unique gift cards now just in time for X-mas?

Buying Car?

Good news! Fuel price is dropping, from USD140 per barrel to below USD50 per barrel. So running cost is not longer a factor to consider. Well if you have the financial meant than this is a good time to consider buying a car. I am sure with all the car sales promotion going on finding your dream car will not be a difficult task.

Ok! So you have narrow down to just the car you want to buy & now you got yourself a difficult choice! Car insurance! So many car insurance to choose! Which one is suitable for you? Well you have to consider the cost of having your brand new car insurance coverage, in most case how much you pay for your premium depend on your driving record. Of cause base on your previous insurance coverage, if you have a clean record then the premium you have to pay will be less. Well that is just some of the factors to consider when choosing the correct car insurance.

DIY Cleaning National Air-Con

Ok! Another DIY post! Well I do like to DIY whenever possible as I like to save some monies & of cause being a fussy fellow I like to get a job done to my satisfaction! This is my DIY National Air-Con, in this previous post I blog about DIY Toshiba ir-Con cleaning ( I got 4 air-con at home ). So this is how I spend my weekend, cleaning my very dirty National air-con.

As shown it is very dirty, the filter is clog with dust & even fine hair!!The cooling fins is being coated with dirt as well, no wander it is no so cool nowadays. Taking the whole casing apart only involve removing 4 screws. Two for the main cover, one to remove the lovern motor & one earthing screw. I have to remove the lovern assembly as I have to clean the blower fan's fin located inside the air-con unit as clean fan' fin is more efficient & quiet. Care must be taken when removing the lovern as it is secure by ledge. Normally air con cleaning just involve cleaning the filter & cooling fins, since I am doing the cleaning myself I might as well do a good job & give it a completed clean out.

Shown above the cleaned air-con part & cooling fins. Before cleaning the cooling fin made sure that you cover up the electrical board with plastic bag. Normally I use dishes washer to clean the various part but I sometime use liquid soap as it give a nice smell after that. I clean the cooling & blower fan fins using brush & sponges & clean off using garden hose ( after cleaning the air-con the room is almost flooded hence I end-up cleaning the room as well ).

Now for outside unit. To take out the fan I have to disassembler the casing which is a weird 2 blade design, so I might take apart its casing total number of screws is 14 plus one nut for the fan propeller. Now cleaning the cooling fins is easier using brush, dish washer & spraying it clean using garden hose. Care must be taken when taking apart the casing to avoid cut.

I have made a pervious entry on cleaning air-con, but on that occassion I am clean Toshiba air-con. It is much easier to clean Toshiba then National air-con. in term of usage I perfer Toshiba air-con to National now known as Panasonic. The whole process of cleaning air-con took me half a day.

Onkyo Tx-Sr875! Value for money! Feature wise!

HT is all in the rage now with the availabilities of HD Lcd & plasma Tv & most importantly the Blue Ray Disc & thus the blue ray player. Being a fellow who like to keep up with the latest gadget, so I too go & buy myself a Plasma Tv ( full post up with update later, but for now I have a write up on my Plasma Tv Full HD TH-50PY700H, it is on my other ‘unrated’ site aka ‘horny’ site! ) & also a Panasonic Blue Ray player DMP-BD30 ( full post up with update later, but for now got this ‘unrated’ post. ).

What is the use of having a good visual without the omp effect of a great audio effect? After all we are watching BD movie with all the latest sound effect here. That brings out the problem of buying the correct av receiver. I made the mistake of buying the wrong av amp, the Pioneer Vsx-917s, it is a great amp on its own right so long as u r not using it to watch BD. This is because it cannot decode Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD Master Audio & DTS-HD High Resolution which is available in a BD movie.

Thus I have no choice but to buy the Onkyo Tx-Sr875, some brief spec of the av amp:-

Has the ability to decode all the latest BD sound code Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD Master Audio & DTS-HD High Resolution which is available in a BD movie plus all the existing audio code DTS, DTS Es Discrete/Matrix, DTS Neo6, DTS 96/24, Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic IIx & Dolby Digital Ex ( This is a very important factors as most BD player can’t decode it, but recently some can, like Panasonic DMP-BD50 but it is real expansive. )

HDMI 4in 1out 1.3a version (4 HDMI in, the more the better as u can connected more HDMI device later, BD player, PS3 & media player & pc for eg 1HDMI out to Plasma/Lcd Tv, 2HDMI out will be better for another connection to projector for eg The latest Onkyo 876 got 2HDMI out)

Can do up-conversion from all video signal to 1080p ( This meant u can even use a normal DVD player which output video signal in 480p to 1080p using the on-board HQV Reon-VX chip, this chip is much better than most av using Faroudja chip. This feature is useful if u r still using a normal DVD player/sat receiver 480 video signal to 1080p, it result is input signal dependant. This feature is of not much use to me as my Panasonic DMP-BD30 already output all video to 1080p stage. As for my Astro decode, I did try it out using s-cable in up conversion to 1080p via HDMI, the picture quality is slightly better but not worth it as the Astro signal suck in the first place anyway. )

300w rms X 7 @ 4ohm, 250w rms X 7 @ 6ohm, 160w rms X 7 @ 8ohm ( The higher the better, do notice as the speaker ohm get smaller the power output increase. Hi-fi speaker at 4 ohm is rare & most speakers are rated in 6ohm & 8ohm. When buying or choosing an av amp do take note of the power output is rate at which ohm. If possible do compare all the amp power output at the same 6ohm range or 8ohm range. It is alway better to buy an amp with big output as u will not have restriction when buying HT speakers later, but then high output amp will cost more. )

Other extra feature. THX Certified Ultra 2. Audyssey MultEQ XT. 192/24 Bit Burr-Brown Audio DAC. Bi-Amping & BTL. Tone control setting 7 equalizer band for all 7 speaker ( can use it to control all speaker so that it got similar tone output ).Crossover for all individual 7 speaker ( most useful in speaker set up ).

The above is just some of the factors/feature I took into consideration when buying an av amp. As I mention I buy the wrong amp that is the Pioneer Vsx-917s. So here is the comparison, it is 14.5kg heavier, 15mm wider, 36mm higher, 106mm deeper & 210 watt more powerful! So in other word bigger in all sense, but then one Onkyo Tx-Sr875 is more than two Pioneer Vsx-917s in price!

The above two picture is a comparison between the Pioneer Vsx-917s & Onkyo Tx-Sr875 & u can see how heavy the Onkyo is in the second picture! The Onkyp tx-Sr875 weight in at 23.3kg! So care must be taken to ensure that your Tv cabinet rack can take the weight. Anyway due to it big size it will be a very tight squeeze to put the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 in most Tv cabinet. Now for most other av amp this will not be so much of consent but for the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 it is a big problem! This is because the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 runs hot! Very hot! In fact when the temp reaches 70c it will shut down.

Now to prevent this from happening I just put the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 on top of the Tv cabinet & for good measure I install two cpu cooling fan on top of it DIY style as shown by the two pic. I made use of two 5” cpu cooling fan as it is very cheap. For the cooling fans power I made use of any old h/p charger 3.6v so that the fan is running silently at low speed ( it is normally set to operate at 12v at full power but it will be very noisy ) & it will be enough, I find out that temp is only at 41c after using the av amp with volume set 42 point for a few hours as compare to 60c without the use of cooling fan. 

Up-date.6-6-2010

I have 'up-grade' the two 5" cpu cooling fan to two 8" lap-top cooling fan. Some more the two new fan cum with 'bling bling' blue led! Look very nice & cool. The two 8" fan is source from two lap-top cooling fan as shown in the picture. I use just one mp3 usb power to power it. Before u buy similar lap-top cooler make sure that its 8" fan can be detached as some cannot be detached.

Oh yes u can accesses the ‘hidden’ manual of the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 by using this steps:- Press ( keep pressing ) the display button on the av amp ( not the remote display button ) then press the standby button once on the av amp once then release the display button the press the tone button in quick steps ( Apart from this steps Onkyo Tx-Sr875 have other ‘hidden’ manual which I didn’t use ).

Setting up the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 need some getting used to & I no choice but to read up the owner manual which is 118 pages thick! Connection is done via HDMI connection, Panasonic DMP BD30 HDMI out to Onkyo Tx-Sr875 HDMI in & then from Onkyo Tx-Sr875 HDMI out to Panasonic TH-50PY700 HDMI in. Picture setting is all set to 1080p.As for audio set up I made use of the Audyssey MultEQ XT set up system. Basically you just poke in the supplied setting up mic ( supplied with the amp ) & followed the on-scream display & the owner manual. Before this u has to made adjustment to the speaker type & number of speaker u have. Anyway after the set up I did make some minor adjustment to the speaker level. For better result I suggest making full use for all the 8 position.

It is most lucky for me as both my Plasma Tv & blu ray player are from Panasonic & thus I can make use of Panasonic Vierra Link system. It basically meant that switching on the BD player will automatically on the plasma as well with the corrected input too. Now if I set the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 HDMI setting to on it will even switch on the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 also. All very convenience but I didn't use this setting on the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 as it meant the amp will be in standby at all time so use up some electrical bill ( Yes I am a cheapskate! ). I am happy to note that the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 don’t have any ‘handshake’ problem which some other av amp have resulting in no picture or audio/video out of syn.

One other feature of Onkyo Tx-Sr875 which impresses me is its remote control. As shown on the above pic its remote is the biggest ( I also show my Pioneer Vsx-917s remote, silver. Its seem that the bigger remote u have the better the product is. In fact other brand av amp even got two remote, Denon for eg. ). What is so good about it is it can ‘learn’ to control other device! In this case I even set it up to control my Astro sat decoder & also the ceiling fan! Now that is the best OEM remote I have use so far.

In conclusion I am most happy with its performance & thus I have no regret using the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 as the centre of my HT system. Now if this post is a bit ‘dry’ & boring u can have another look at my post on the Onkyo Tx-Sr875 here! This is the ‘unrated’ vision on my other site which is ‘unrated’!

Buying Kitchen Appliances……………

You think it is an easy task? Think against! Now what exactly does a modern kitchen must have? Refrigerators, wall ovens, washing machines, food processors & so on & so forth, this are just some of the example of the kitchen appliances which you must buy for your kitchen.

But which types & brands to buy & it is within your budget? Well you can go to the nearest department store or visit all the electrical store in town & look at all the kitchen appliances which u have intention to buy. And I am sure after doing all the browsing & asking for all this kitchen appliances you still end up very confuse & undecided on exactly which types & brands of the kitchen appliances suit your kitchen.

He! He! Trusted me, I know as I have being doing that! Well I did find a better way of solving this task by having a look at online kitchen appliances store! This solves all the problem of what type, brand & my budget on buying kitchen appliances. So to all my dear readers, why don’t you give online buying a try? It will also save time & fuel visiting all the electrical store.