I actually went there to see the SPL battle. But the SPL battle doesn’t turn out to be what I expected. I thought they will be showing off their sound system. But it turns out the battle is just few cars running few test to see who’s woofer can blast the highest sound pressure. Or something like that. Quite meaningless to me. Fairly disappointed. Looks like what I am looking for is car showcase, not the SPL battle. Well, the Bug Fest is worthwhile. Looking at the classics preserve until now is something to be proud of. Kudos to the beetle enthusiast.

Enough the crapping. I am sure you all just wanna look at the picture. I have not much to write either. More pictures after the jump

I always thought that all advertising program works like this:

1. The agent (like Nuffnang, Advertlets, Adsense, etc) approach potential advertisers (or vice versa) and discuss together to come up with a deal.
2. They agreed on a deal. The advertiser agrees to pay RM10 for every 1,000 impression on say, 50 bloggers they chose.
3. The advertisement campaign is on. For that one week, the advertiser gets 1,000,000 impressions from the 50 bloggers, and paid RM10,000 for the campaign.
4. The agent takes 30% from the campaign. The rest is shared between the 50 bloggers based on the impressions they contributed to the campaign.

The logic is here. The RM10,000 is their sales, and the payment to the 50 bloggers is their cost of sales. With 30% gross profit from sales, I wouldn’t say it’s a lot. They have an office. They have staffs. They have to look for advertisers. They have to post all the cheques to bloggers nationwide. All these are expenses that are incurred to make sure their operations goes on smoothly.

But Danny’s post makes me think, how does companies like Nuffnang make money IF they’re not using a revenue sharing model? How do they make profit? I doubt the advertiser are willing to pay extra agent fees. I seriously doubt that.

Anyways, here’s it is

Simple instructions :
Use the first letter of your name to answer each question. Must be places, names … nothing made up. You can’t use your own name for the boy/girl’s name question. If you get stuck, skip to the next one.

Famous Singer: Greenday, Gorillaz… Band is counted right?
Four Letter Word: Geek!
Street: I’m not from Penang, but got such street as Jalan Gurney kah?
Colour: Green
Gifts/Present: Guns! :sweat:
Vehicle: Golf Buggy
Things in Souvenir Shop: Glass decoration
Boy Name: Giovanni
Girl Name: Gabriel
Movie title: Gladiator
Drink: Green Tea
Occupation: Gem Digger
Celebrity: Gong Li
Magazine: GamePro or something
U.S. City: Georgia?
Pro Sports: Golf. That’s the only letter G sports that I can think of. Is that pro sports?.
Fruit: Grapes
Reason for Being Late to work: Gangster blow up my car… :sweat:
Something you throw away: Garbage lor…
Something you shout: Gah!

And I don’t want to tag anyone. Here’s the list of people who did this meme.

• G for GeminiGeek (That’s Me!)
• K for KennyLJS
• M for Mariuca
• P for Pang KimFei
• T for Tak Feng & Li Li
• Y for Yung

So, just do the meme if your name starts with the alphabet that nobody do. I want to collect all 26 alphabets!

Here’s the details:
Theme: We are one Big Family
Date: 29th December 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: Halo Cafe, Miri
Time: 6.00 – 8.00 pm (auspicious hours)

Main Sponsors: Halo Cafe
To be confirm sponsors: Advertlets.com

Interested to join? Register yourself by leaving a comment at Uchu Keling’s entry and you’re in I am definitely not going to miss the fun and probably free foods!! Mee Kolok naik, nasi kari naik, gaji haven’t naik lah… so free food all the way lah..

Now here’s the deal. Email forwarding actually helps spammer to get your email without even paying for it. And for your information, people can actually sell lists of emails for money. That’s why you will notice that most websites that requires you to register and provide your email address have a privacy policy, stating that they will not sell your email address to any third party. While most of us don’t really read this kind of small wording policies and crap, but I think we should know this kind of thing, and why do they state their policy.

People usually enter their friends’ email address when forwarding emails in the ‘To’ field. When you’re forwarding emails, you know that you’re not forwarding to one friend only, but usually ALL (if not, MOST) the people in your contacts. And what happens here is that all the email addresses to the one you’re forwarding to will appear in the forwarded emails.

Example of a forwarded email

That is an example of a forwarded email that has been circulating in the internet for ages. Look at all the email addresses that appears in it. If this email happens to be forwarded to someone who wants to take advantage of selling email addresses, he will get shit load of money. And imagine if spammer got all those emails. Hey, this could be one of the reasons why many of us get spam mails every day. You know you didn’t subscribe to anything, and yet you get all those junk mail on enlargement pills and what not.

Most people didn’t know that they can actually hide their friends’ email address when forwarding email. If you hide your those email addresses, you’re helping them. Nobody wants their email address to be exposed to strangers.

I once got an email in Hotmail. I used that email as my MSN Messenger passport. And that email is one victim of forwarded emails. I got like so many forwarded emails per day, and those people who forwarded the email put all his friends’ email addresses in the “To” field. And guess what? Some stranger add me in her MSN Messenger. When I asked how she got my email address, she said she randomly add people that is in a forwarded email. Dang, I felt like being stalked. But at least now such thing didn’t happen anymore. Random people who adds me in MSN is either my blog’s reader or people wanting support on my WordPress Theme.

How can I protect my friends and myself?

Here are a few tips that you can apply to prevent this from happening. If not prevent, at least it helps to protect your friends’ privacy.

1. Use the “BCC” field

The “BCC” field in your compose email interface simply means “Blind Carbon Copy”. Like its name suggested, any email addresses in this field will receive a copy, but all the recipients email is “blind”, or simply means hidden from others who receives the same messages. It is a good idea to forward all your emails using the BCC field.

If you’re using Gmail, you can just put all email addresses in “BCC” field with empty “To”. So, it’s easy if you’re using Gmail. However, Yahoo Mail doesn’t allow empty “To” field, but there’s a workaround to it (read further down). On other email clients and services, I am not too sure how they work, but I do hope you can share them by leaving a comment here

2. Group your contacts

Most email services have a proper contact manager. You group your contacts into proper groups like friends and family, business contacts, clients, etc. If you group them properly, just enter a group name in the “To” and everyone in the group will receive the email. And the good news is all the email address within a group isn’t shown, it will only show the group name.

Now what happens if you don’t want to send the email to a member of a group? Here’s what you can do. Create a group named “Undisclosed Recipients” and add your own email in it, or you can add email addresses that you WILL always forward to. Every time you want to be picky when forwarding email, just put “Undisclosed Recipients” in the “To” field and you can pick all your friends email one by one and have them in the “BCC” field. That way, you’re hiding everyone’s email.

3. Don’t Believe in any Chain Mails

Yes. All of them is fake, it’s just the matter of whether you’re believing it or not. There are a few types of chain mails that I’ve received and I know its fake. Here it is:

1. Forward to n number of people and your crush will call you. Or, forward to n number of people or you will have misfortune. Now seriously, how true is this?
2. Forward to n number of people and Bill Gates (or some other rich prick) will wire money to you to your account. The hell? Bill Gates is busy promoting his Microsoft, and you think he will bother to wire his money to you? Even if he has the time, now think, how the hell can he get your address or banking account number by just looking at email addresses? Clearly it’s fake, and clearly its the work of a spammer trying to get as many emails as possible.
3. Forward to n number of people and a cute cat will appear in your screen. I tried, nothing happens. And it will not happen. I can guarantee 100% that it will never happen. Don’t ask me why, it’s just freaking impossible. Trust me, it’s just a myth.

4. Remove all Email Addresses in the Forwarded mails

It’s a good practice to do so. Now that you know how to hide email addresses from appearing, so it’s a good idea to delete all the addresses that stays intact in the forwarded messages. Just remove all of it before you forward to your friends. This way, you can protect other people’s emails in the future message circulation.

So, do you have any other tips on protecting the privacy of your friends?

If there’s no Google Search Engine

I use Google all the time. To do web searching, looking for definition, imperial/metric conversion, currency conversion, and a whole lot more. Just look at the features in Google. There’s a lot you can do with Google, not just web searches. And I think those features are not available in other search engines.

The closest replacement? I guess the 2nd most popular search engine is Yahoo! and Ask. I used to use Yahoo search when it was still powered by Google search engine. And I occasionally use Ask for my school projects research last time. Dictionary.com should be the best to replace the “define:” feature in Google. Xe.com’s UCC should be the closest site if I were looking for currency exchange.

If there’s No Gmail

If there’s no Gmail, I guess I can’t be contacted online. My Gmail is my primary email. My MSN Passport uses my Gmail address. Any emails sent to my domain webmail is forwarded to my Gmail. All my registration to any web services, forums, portal, or anything that requires email are registered using my Gmail address. Imagine if Gmail gone just like that? I think I will go insane the moment Gmail announce shut down for some reason.

The closest replacement? For email, I think Yahoo! Mail is comparable to Gmail, though I still prefer Gmail’s labeling and conversation feature. Hotmail is popular, but I don’t like it. Hah, screw you Microsoft. You have enough market shares when it comes to OS

If there’s no Google Reader

I only started using Google Reader few months ago. Back then when Google Reader was just introduced, it totally suck, which is why it never comes to my mind to use itr. I was using a free FeedReader, and pretty satisfied with it. I never thought of using web feed reader. But since my monitor overheated, I thought it’s better to use online feed reader rather than offline version because you get to read your feeds on any computer. I learnt my lesson after being unable to read my feeds because my subscribed feeds is on my PC. That’s when I start using Google Reader and never turn back since.

The closest replacement? No doubt it’s Bloglines. I’ve never use Bloglines before, but there are certain people who says that Bloglines are better. It is said that Bloglines updates the feed almost instantly, unlike Google Reader where there’s a delay.

If there’s no iGoogle

iGoogle is my home page at the moment. I have a Digg widget, TokyoToshokan feeds, Google Reader widget, and also Gmail widget in my iGoogle homepage. Then, I have a tab where I put all those flash game in it. So when I’m bored, I will just go there and play some games. iGoogle loads pretty fast, and it looks cool with its theme.

That’s the feature I like the most in iGoogle. I can read feeds in my Google Reader in within iGoogle! Nifty eh? Oh yeah, I am a fan of AppleGeeks

The closest replacement? I know Netvibes is popular. It looks great. Not much comment on it, other than it has no Google Reader widgets I think it’s a lot better to read all my subscribed feeds in a widget or module rather than having individual feeds spread in within a homepage.

Conclusion

I can’t live without Google. Can you?

How do I help?

Simple. Spread the news. Try to make this notice reach out to all the Miri bloggers around the globe. And if you’re from Miri, or you currently resides in Miri, then you can submit the link to your blog by leaving a comment here on this entry.

Any requirements?

Yes. Make sure you’re from Miri, or currently resides in Miri. It will be no meaning to this digest if bloggers from other places started to appear in “Miri Bloggers Digest”. Well, you should get the drift. Secondly, your blog must have a feed, be it in RSS or ATOM format. I believe most blog have a feed, so don’t worry. Just submit your link

I met the requirements. How do I submit my blog link?

Leave a comment here. Just say something like “I want to be in the digest” or something similiar and have your blog link filled in the Personal Website in the comment form. As simple as that.

So, why should I submit my blog link to this digest?

It helps me to test the system. If it works OK, I am able to launch a portal that benefits Miri Bloggers in terms of traffic. I get to test my system, you get to get your blog more exposure, not too bad isn’t it?

Interesting. Tell me more about this portal.

Miri Bloggers Network is a portal that helps to connect all bloggers from Miri together. I’ve always love to get to know more people into the blogging passion. Let us revolutionize the way our media works. I believe this portal can do more than just connecting bloggers. We’ll see as this network evolves. With this portal, I aim to bring exposure to those talented writers/bloggers yet hidden somewhere. I want all bloggers that writes well get to be read by people.

As a start, I will only have this portal will have bloggers digest, a simple forum board, and not forgetting a blog keep track of any announcement or updates.

So, help me spread the words.

Reason #1: The Smell

Imagine having at least 50 cramming in a room to watch movie with you. People from all walks of life and all sorts of SMELL. You don’t know whether that person, sitting in front of you took a shower or not. You don’t know if the person behind you have body odour or not. You don’t know if the person if the person sitting beside you (not your friend of course, if you have company) is using some weird perfume or cologne that might kill you in no time.

Reason #2: The Handphones

Some people just don’t understand how annoying their handphones are. Can’t they just freaking silent their phone, or even better, just turn it off? I don’t really care if you have the latest Bleach Opening song as your ringtone, or some girl’s voice saying “You got a message, baby” as your SMS tone. That’s not all. Some people are like shouting, trying to fight the volume of the movie when talking on the phone. How ridiculous is that? I just want to watch my freaking movie!

Reason #3: The Late Comers

I don’t mind if those late comers kept quiet and go to their seat silently. Some even bend down (so that you are not blocked) and whisper “Sorry, sorry” to you. That’s the people with respect. Some people, they’re late, they’re noisy, and they’re like purposely stand in front of you arguing “This is our seat lah!” while pointing fingers here and there. Eh please lah, I want to watch the movie, not watching you pointing fingers arguing over nothing, even if you are some pretty girl. There’s a lane at the side there for you to argue, not in front of the movie watchers! IDIOTS.

Reason #4: The Noise

I don’t understand. Why some people can’t keep quiet and watch the damn movie? They are chattering all the way through out the movie. We’re in the cinema, not KOPITIAM! Please lah, talk after you watch the movie. If you still want to talk because you have too many things to kaypoh, well, WALK OUT OF THE THEATER HALL. It’s not that hard.

Reason #5: The Spoilers

There are certain people who have nothing better to do, so they watch the same movie for the second time. I don’t mind if they can just watch the movie QUIETLY and laugh or react when they should. There are people who are loud, and likes to spoil. They sat at the back there, shouting, “After this is funny… Hahahaha…”, or “Later the ghost will jump out from that window… SEE??!!”, or “He’s the killer!! I tell you! No lies!!”. I hate those kind of people.

Reason #6: Crappy Miri Cinema

If I were to be in some other place this reason will not be in this list. Miri’s Star Cineplex seriously sucks! The video quality is so blurry. The contrast is freaking low. Yesterday, I went to watch Invisible Target with my friends. And you know what? After like an hour watching, I realise that the bad guy in that movie is Wu Jing, the same guy in Twins Mission. It’s not because he change a lot, it’s because the video quality is so damn blurry. Not only the video quality, the audio quality sucks too. The theater hall have so many speakers, yet, you can only hear sound coming from the front only. The rear speakers are there for decoration. Wait, there’s more to complain. I feel occasional water dripping (which kinda wet my shoulder) from the top of the hall because of the aircond water leak. What a great MOVIE experience eh?

If I were to watch at home, I don’t have to be annoyed by the smells, the late comers, the noise, the spoilers, or any other distraction. Why? Because you can PAUSE THE MOVIE! Though my TV is not as large as the screen in the cinema, but at least I it is clear (I always make sure the pirated DVD I bought is in the BEST Quality) and I can adjust the CONTRAST. Now tell me, what’s so cool about going to the cinema?

I’ve been complaining about TMNet and how suck they are since day one. Every time you called the 1300 Streamyx CustCare number, you will be greeted with the same troubleshooting steps, with their same claims of “resolved within 2 working days”.

For some reason, TMNet is very efficient yesterday. I called them at 1pm. I told them I did the troubleshooting and I am still unable to connect to the internet. I told them my DSL is OFF since Saturday morning. So, I lodge a report. After writing down the report number, the lady says she will direct me to 2nd Level Technical Support. Wow, even their Technical Support Department have Levels! Heh! I didn’t know that. Anyway, the guy in the 2nd Level Technical Support told me that he will contact local technician and send them to my area to check on the port in the Pizza Box. And that guy said it will be resolved within 24 hours!

Sure enough, at 3pm, a technician came. He is the same one who came around 5 times in two months period few years back. He’s the one who fixed my miscapped problem that time. He checked my modem, restarted it, and still see no sign of DSL going ON. Then he say he will go to the pizza box and fix the port for me. After around 30 minutes, I see my modem’s DSL started to blink, then it goes stable. He called me to confirm whether it is working or not. He then said that he will close the report for me.

And for the first time, after 2 hours calling them, they sent a technician to fix the problem. Previously when I called them, it took them at least one day before a technician came to check on the problem. Are they getting better on the Technical Department? Or is it because I am not as angry as Mr Chua when I called the hotline? Well, I do hope they can maintain this efficiency, or perhaps making it better. :happy:

I lend him Kekkon Dekinai Otoko, a Japanese drama. The drama is basically about the life of an eccentric guy, who’s enjoying his singlehood and he doesn’t have the intention to get marry someone. As the story goes on, he met girls, and somehow those girls become part of his life and that’s how the drama evolves. Well, I didn’t explain properly to my friend when he borrowed the drama. I just told him that the Kekkon Dekinai Otoko literally translated as “A Guy who cannot get Married”.

Perhaps that’s how he misunderstands. Later that night, he SMS-ed me saying:

“I thought the story is about a guy who have problem with his DICK! It’s only about his odd personality… Cheh, I put too high expectation to it lah…”

I was like, WTF? My mistake I guess. I mean after all, I forgot to explain to him about the story of the drama. I just translated the title and told him that drama is interesting and funny. And so, I replied him:

“Dick?? Why would you say so? You watch too much porn is it”

And I don’t even know why I replied like that. What does porn have to do with his perception on marriage anyway!? After a few moments, he answered:

“Girls nowadays are looking for great sex mah… If your dick can’t do the work, do you think you can attract any girl meh?”

This sparks my curiosity. What are the attributes to become an ideal guy in a girl’s point of view? Is it money? Security? Looks? Or The “Dick” factor?