Reviving an Old Nitro glow plug Radio Controlled Car..

My brother passed me his 2 year old Kyosho RC car.. The great thing was that it was FOC, and even greater was the fact that it was a nitro Glow plug engine car! THe bad news was that he had not run it for the past two years. We found out after i took it out of the box that the engine had seized..

Finally got some 25% Nitro from the local toycity Ipoh parade, a few days back. Cost me 30 ringgit for half a litre! Decided to seriously try to get the car moving again.

Took me a night to partially disassemble the engine .. The crankcase had seized, due to lots of gooey stuff in it.. WD 40 the whole thing, then it was ok.. The piston and crank was nice and loose.. When i tried to start it, the starter section also stuck.. had to clean that also, and apparently the pull start bearing also jam.. WD40 also don't seem to work that well.. After getting things slightly loose, Reassembled the engine onto the car, poured some 25% nitro into the tank, primed it and after a few pulls, everything got loose.. Realized that the best thing to get the stuff loose was the nitro itself.. Still.. no ignition.. Removed engine heatsink and checked out the glowplug.. Apparently, The paint on the heatsink was the problem, Crocodile clips of the starter battery wasn't heating up the plug.. A little scratching later, glowplug lit up well.. After that, a little priming.. and vroom vroom.. engine started.. Quite fun to play, but the road outside my house is really too rough for the GT car.. looking for some better paved roads..Either that or get some buggy tyres for the car.. Al in all .. Good fun.. The sound of the engine is AWESOME.. Just like the sound of F! cars on TV.. The best part was starting the car after rebuilding the engine.. Its like resuscitating a dying patient back to life. HA HA!!

Turtle Wax "ICE" review

I finally bought Turtle Wax "ICE" yesterday.. 20% discount at Jaya jusco sale. Came up to 80 ringgit with a bottle of free tutlewax zip wax car shampoo. Oooh Used it this morning.. and it is really Very easy to use. So easy to apply and easy to remove. Really no white residue. The after effects, Shine is on par with turtle wax platinum. The wonder is that it also waxes all the rubber and plastic at the same time. Applying it is like using a wet sponge to wipe a car. It doesn't really dry to a haze.. but it dries a little, After that its just wiping off with the provided microfiber cloth. If you're going to get 1 bottle of wax only and are also lazy to wax your car.. Ice is the bottle to get. Very easy to apply and buff.. No need orbital polisher also. Orbital polisher would be overkill.. Yes "ICE" is much easier than conventional waxes. Rememeber to was the car first. Use a wool mit or at least a chenille sponge to prevent scratches on your car during washing. and work from top to bottom as the sand is usually at the bottom, rinse washing pad frequently. AND most important.. must dry either with lots and lots of "good morning" towels or buy a really good Chamois. (japanese real chamois not some bullshit one) Problem with ICE is that it will not remove water spots. THat one have to use real wax. ICE can only shine clean surfaces.. Get some tyre shine liquid for your tyres as you buy the "ice" also.. Hand Job also will be satisfactory. Machine would be overkill for "ICE" however i've yet to see the long term effects of Ice.

Honda Civic 2.0 FD2 Malaysian Spec.

I've finally got my Honda Civic!! Booked it on December 12th 2007, and got delivery on the 13th of Jan 2008.. So its a 2008 car. Its a nice car. Got the Mugen BK from GC motorsport. They did a rather good job on the bodykit.. 99% satisfied. Paint job also satisfactory, but after washing car today.. realized that i'll have to clay bar part of the rear BK as the paint job wasn't very smooth. Honda waxed my car before delivery, but they machine waxed it and burnt parts of the waxing.. i hand waxed the whole car to fix it.. Its a holiday today so i spent most of the day washing and polishing it. Used totally turtle wax Platinum series. I suggest anyone going to looking for turtle wax to buy the "ice" version. I had a lot of trouble with the leftover white in the seams of the car from the platinum wax. Other mods in my car include the mugen replica sidestep and the illuminated keyring. (will have to go back to GC to fix the plastic covers over the steering as i think it wasn't fitted back properly by GC or something broke during assembly) A small DIY mod, which i made due to small pebbles thrown up by the tyre entering the sideskirt.. making a lot of noise.. show u picture afterwards. Its just a piece of plastic double taped to block of the channel which pebbles accumulate The Civic Side Profile really looks much better with the Mugen Bodykit. Gives it a much more agressive stance.. Also of course gives it a slightly more customized look without sacrificing the stock car values.. The rear 3/4 angle is probably the best angle to take a pic of the civic. The high trunk with its tapering nose makes it most beautiful. The eight year old putra is starting to show its age both in the paintwork quality as well as the design.. I kept the car numbers there in case any of you want to buy number la...

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Diver Recompression in Malaysia

I'm working in Malaysia's Premier Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Diver Recompression Chamber today. Picture on the left shows the 6 person chamber being used at "The Centre for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine" in Greeentown, Ipoh, Perak. Rather nice setup here.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is rather new in its clinical use in Malaysia. There are only 3 main centres, one each in KL, Ipoh and Penang. Other centres use monoplace chambers which are small one person hyperbaric chambers.This Hyperbaric Chamber, is the most widely used one, as it is the pioneer commercial Hyperbaric Wound Care centre in Malaysia

The Underwater Medicine Consultant in this centre also Decompressess divers with Decompression Illness or DCI. I supervised a Diver Decompression 3 months back, diver enjoyed his 8 hours of Oxygen, and went back a pain free happy diver.

As far as Daily business is concerned, the clinical hyperbaric oxygen theraphy here deals more with wound care, especially with diabetic wounds. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a miracle cure, but it sure gives these diabetic wounds literally a good breath of life.

When in the Chamber, what happens is that the patients are literally pressurized and then asked to inhale pure oxygen for a duration of time. During the time in the chamber, the entire body of the patient is fed with a big boost of oxygen. There is a big boost of Oxygen because not only is blood carried in the hemoglobin of the blood, the increased pressure of the enviroment allows oxygen to be carried by even the plasma of the blood. Plasma is the fluid which bed blood cells swim in. This leads to more than a hundred fold of oxygen reaching previously oxygen starved places of the diabetic wounds.

As with all medical procedures, there is no 100% guarantee, but this breath of life will at least make the scales tip to your favour.

Email me if you have any questions about Hyperbaric Theraphy Treatment via the comments below.

HP Pavilion tx1000 Entertainment PC.

Yippe ka yay!

HP Pavilion tx1000 Entertainment PC. or specifically, my tx1221au

Finally.. A tablet PC to call my own. I've always been amazed with the capability of Tablet PCs to fold into a Slate, amazed with its capability to read Emags and Ecomix with a little more ease, being foldable and all.

The main thing that was in the way was the Phenomenal high price of Tablet PCs. This HP tablet was really a steal as it was priced about only 30% higher than the cheapest entry level PC at this time.

The great points of the Tablet? Inherently its design. The Tablet. Besides that, for an entry level notebook, it boasts fingerprint recognition technology, 12 inch touch screen. (Not a touch pad with the wacom pen. You can actually click icons using any pen.), a remote control for the Tablet PC which hides away in the express card slot, DVD burner with lightscribe, multi card reader (doesn't read CF... Damn) and Altec Lansing Speakers, and TWO batteries. 160GB Hardrive and 1GB ram ( which i quickly upgraded to 1.5GB. another 512mb will be coming soon.) lastly.. VISTA.

The Fingerprint recognition tech is rather practical. I sign into the computer without needing to type in a Password, just swipe the finger. I can also sign into Gmail using the same finger. What happens if you finger gets damaged? You have the option of swiping all 10 fingers. So if you finger gets damaged, you can't type anyway... ha ha!!

The Touch screen is pretty unsensitive. Don't know why.. Compared to my Pocket PCs i actually have to use quite a lot of force to use the touch screen. But using the touchscreen with the built i stylus sort of solves the problem. I guess thats why HP said that the touchscreen was optimized for stylus input. The screen is a bit dull too.. Not very bright, but enough.

The Remote control is quite a nice throw in. Very compact. Can you see it at the bottom of the picture above? Fits snugly into the express card slot. Controls the media Player and also slideshows. Great for presentations.

This is one of the reasons for getting the Tablet PC. Reading emagazines. Folding up the Tablet to slate mode, I get a pretty readable Emagazine. Page turning is by touch screen. With Emagazines so easily available on the internet, I've got more magazines to read now than ever. Granted, the Tablet is a bit heavy to hold, but look at it this way, you can never ever fold a regular notebook. I've got collection of ecomix too, Tintin, Asterix, Groo.. Punisher, yea.. its a better way to lie in bed or on the sofa rather than sitting in front of your PC to read something relaxing.

What you pay is what you get?

Before i type further the next tablet in this model line up costs about 50% more with a smaller 80gb hard drive. and its only a Turion tl-56 so its not much of a upgrade for the price being paid.

OK.. my tablet pc processor leaves a bit more to be desired. Its only running an Athlon 64 X2 tk-53 at 1.7 Ghz. After using it for some time, i realized that this processor doesn't have a regular speedstep kind of technology like my old 1st generation centrino notebook. Its got kind of a Manual speedstep technology. Have to manually set the performance to low, med or high.

The Heat? The heat is terrible but still bearable. Hot as Hell. With all the hot air blowing out form the Fan behind, i bet i could cook and egg if i left it behind the fan for long enough. So far, i've used it to dry my table after i spilt water on it. Its not for using on your lap for certain. Would be uncomfortable to have cooked skin. Putting it on the table is ok.

The actual Processor speeed? I'm rather pleased with it. Comparing to my aging 1st generation Centrino, 1.5 Ghz with 768mb Ram and this Athlon 1.7Ghz with 2gb Ram, the Performance on the Athlon tablet is moree than double that of the Centrino. I used a free Benchmarking software Novabench.

On Vista's benchmarking, lowest score was 2.4 on the Gaming graphics although i had given is 128mb ram in the BIOS settings. Processor was highest at 4.6

I don't do any heavy processing stuff. Its more for light picture editing, blogging, as a media companion and presentations. I'm happy with the processor speed. Acomplishes all my tasks well. The tagline for this tablet is as an entertainement PC

Remember I said 2 batteries? When at best performance mode, the 4 cell slim light batteries lasted only 2 hours. Ha ha ha.. Peanuts! I suppose the other battery, which is a 6 cell would do 3 hours. 6 cell battery is bubble wrapped in the picture above. But still, since i don't commute by train or anything, that isn't a problem.

Windows VISTA! What to say? Ready or not, we have been forced to embrace it. After shutting down all the gay graphics crap, switching everything to Best Performance in visual effects, albeit 2 functions, the buttons and thumbnails instead of icons (for the pictures la). Performance is ok. No issues on my usage level. I suppose I'm easy to satisfy due to my paltry neeeds. The worst part about getting this Vista machine is NETWORKING!!! HAAA!!! My old network of router and Switch doesn't seem to work. Right now i can only network with my other computer VIA my rotten old Dlink wireless b router. LAN netwroking with the old switch is not working. Read up quite a bit including installing a patch for the XP machines, but sadly its a no go. I've come to the conclusion that i will have to upgrade my Networking Hardware to get it going. A linksys or Belkin router will be next on my list.

The bottom line is: YES! I'm happy with my new aquisition. Happy with the price I paid. Isn't it wonderful to get something you want at the price you want? Yea!

Double Monitors with my Notebook

I've always had this lack of Desktop real estate. When i do any webpage editing its always difficult that i can open another page or view my updates, or when I'm watching a movie in fullscreen, i want to be able to surf the web too. Or work on a document. The Best solution for me now is the double monitor option.

How Many monitors can you see in the Picture? As you can see from the picture, I'm using my 3 year old 15.4" Compaq Presario V100 notebook with my 17" Samsung SyncMaster 760BF monitor. The Great thing about my monitor is that its able to swivel to Potrait mode. Its GREAT for reading comics, Emagazines and the like. The Notebook runs on 1024x768 resolution and the samsung 1280x1024.

Swiveling the Samsung monitor is efffortless as it comes with hardware and software to adjust your screen to Portrait or Landscape. Once you start using Portrait mode, you kind of get hooked on it as its very instictive to read in that view. It feels so much more natural.

To set it up, LCD monitors are cheap now. Go get one!

If you want something that can swivel to portrait, there are only a few in the market. As far as i know Samsung carries 2 model. One locally made costs about 650 ringgit (mine) and one from Korea. (Better screen actually, double the price.)

Just Plug it to the RGB output of your notebook, or better yet if your notebook support Digital Video.

If you got a swiveable monitor like mine, install the included software.

If you didn't get a swiveable monitor, just adjust display properties to configure your primary and secondary displays.

Get Ready for double the desktop real estate, and double your productivity or fun, whichever comes first.

The answer to my initial question of "How Many Monitors?" There's a 3rd monitor on the lower left corner. Thats my iPAQ hx2750 PDA which is constantly activesynced to check my Gmail.

3 times the productivity with 3 Monitors? LOL

New addition to my Suunto family

I got a Suunto T1 trainer.It was a good deal at www.lelong.com.my OK.. I admit, it isn't new, it was sold as an Open Box. After purchasing and getting it by COD, i realized that it was indeed an open box, the content was as good as new. Had only been used for training a few hours, according to the T1's history.
It'll be joining my Suunto Mosquito diving computer.These Suunto wristop computers are really amazing. Suunto people just think of something they need to make, and they just do it. The Suunto T1 came with a wireless Heart rate monitor. Thats the flat piece of plastic looking thing that you see in the picture. It doesn't come with a hardware switch but after some research at www.suunto.com it switches on when there is contact between the 2 electrodes, namely the two ends of the heart rate monitor. Its rated to have 300 hours of active use. Very cool, no wires attached. I don't have time for a lengthy review, so i'm just gonna go straight to the bottom line. What the Trainer does is basically, monitor your heart rate, and keep you heat rate within limits that you specify. When your heart rate falls above or below the set limits, it will automatically buzz, informing you that you're screwing up your exercise regime. Pretty Handy.. its like a personal trainer with a 1 track mind. Takes the Guess work out of the workout. Besides that, it shows the duration of exercise, estimates the calories you burnt during your exercise duration. Next on the list to buy is a mountain bike, and find a few friends who want to take up mountain biking, and find some places to ride..