my rss

Thursday, December 31, 2009

test msg from pixelpipe handphone

DIY Temperature Controlled Auto Fan V1.0

Sunday, August 16, 2009

This is the first DIY project undertake to control my saltwater aquarium’s temperature, maintaining it at around 27 degree C.

Since the room temperature is about 30 degree C, by using two DC fans, blowing on the surface of the water, is able to bring down the temperature of about 2-3 degree. Therefore there’s no need to use the much more expensive approach such as using an aquarium chiller.

However to avoid the water temperature from getting too cold during the night, a simple temperature controller is used so that the fans can be turn off when the tank temperature fall less then 27 degree C

The control circuit works on a simple 741 Opamp and a 50K Ohm thermistor and a temperature sensor. The fans are controlled by a relay that will latch on from the opamp output via a transistor,

Here’s how the project looks like,




Here are the components used










The temperature probe, made of a 50K thermistor










The DC fans, two 3 inches 12VDC fans. Commonly used in PC casing








The PCB. Stripboard type









The enclosure






The final Assembly

The PCB

The Fans with holder

The complete set, inclusive of 12VDC adapter

The Calibration.

The calibration is fairly simple, I placed the probe into a warm water together with a calibrated digital thermometer. When the warm water temperature drop to 27 degree C, I turn the trimmer pot until the circuit turns on the fans. Repeat this process until and find tune the trimmer pot if the fans does not run when temperature drops below 27 degree C.

The important of temperature of a saltwater tank

Sunday, August 9, 2009

For saltwater organism to have a comfortable living environment, especially in a confine area such as a home aquarium, it is very important that the temperature of a saltwater tank be maintain as consistence as possible.

I’m living in a tropical country, with room temperature sometime goes to as high as 33 degree C during a hot sunny day and may go down to as low as 25 degree C during the night. If the saltwater aquarium temperature is not maintain at a constant degree, most of the living organism, the fishes, the corals will not able to survive such dramatic changes. Therefore some king of cooling mechanism is required.

There are basically 3 ways to cool down a saltwater tank.

1. Use a cooling fan to cool the water surface of the tank.
2. Use a aquarium chiller to chill down the water.
3. Bring down the room temperature with a air conditioning unit.

Option 1 is the cheapest to setup but lack of consistency and efficiency. The amount of temperature that the cooling fans can bring down is about 2-3 degree C.

Option 2 and 3 will be more effective but expensive to setup and maintain. It is independence of any factor. Just set your desire temperature and the system will cool it to perfection. All you need to do is to pay for the high electricity bill.

After observing my setup and its environment, I use option 1 instate. Reason was room temperature is at about 30 degree C, so with the fan on, it brings down the water temperature to about 27-28 degree C. This is the desire temperature for my tank.

2nd reason is cheap to setup and low in maintenance cost. I choose to use two PC 12VDC fans for this purpose.

The downside of this system is that the saltwater aquarium water evaporates at a very high rate. I’m loosing about 5-8mm of water per day. If left unattended, I lost about 20-30mm in a week. When this happen, the salinity of the saltwater will increase and if it goes too high, it will create some unfavorable condition in the aquarium. Fishes and corals may get stress and sometime even death.

In order to overcome this problem, I decided to work in 2 areas.

1. Use a temperature controlled fans – The cooling fans will only runs when the temperature is above 28 degree C but will stop when water temperature drops to less then 27 degree C. This helps reduce water evaporation.
2. Introduce an automatic water top up system. This system will constantly top up the lost water due to evaporation, water salinity will be maintained.

I will now work into this 2 area with some DIY gadgets.

My 1st Marine Aquarium.

Monday, July 27, 2009

After almost 1 months, my tank finally coming to shape.

Here's how the final results look like. It looks a bit bare, but as time comes I'll slowly add in more species, especially on corals.

I've also included few DIY gadgets, like the protein skimmer at the back, a 36W PL-L lighting, which I've mod from a 20w, 2 feet bigboy light hood and a 12V DC cooling fan.

More DIY gadgets coming, include a auto water top up and temperature control cooling fans.

Planning a babymoon vacation

Friday, July 24, 2009

Have you ever consider having a second honeymoon before your baby is due? If the answer is yes, you are basically referring to a term known as babymoon.

The purpose of having a babymoon is very similar to having a honeymoon. Is basically some romantic, quality time together with the exception that there’s a baby in the tummy waiting to joint you.

Going for a babymoon vacation will not be as easy as having a honeymoon, this is simple because your baby in your tummy is very fragile and great amount of cares are needed for both mother and child.

This will require lots of planning and some precaution to be consider.

This video will give you some brief insign on what "Babymoon Travelling Information Guide" is all about and how it can benefit you in preparing your babymoon vacation.

Earn a living by Making Money Online

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Internet with its wide opportunity to make money online seems too easy and true. Does it really works? Can you really earn a living by making money online?

There’s no definite answer to this question. You can earn a living by making money online, provided you know how and this is no easy task. Yet you can still earn some penny money online easily without too much hassle. But this will not allows you to earn a living on it.

How do you earn penny money without too much effort?

There are many ways to do it. Here is some of it

Advertisement on facebook, twitter or Myspace
By joining such program, you get to receive some small amount of advertisement commission by just display ads or promoting ads. You won’t get rich here but probably earn couple of dollars in a month. I have used twitter to promote CPC ads from Social spark. After 2 months of doing it, I manage to collect about $9 of commission.

Adsense
Adsense is still a popular way to make money online. Again don’t expect this system to bring in hundreds of dollar in a month. Unless you have very high blog traffic or web traffic, we are looking at a figure of >1000 visitors

Pay per post
Those were the days where blogger can make hundred or even thousand of dollar on such program. With the popularity of twitter and facebook, most advertisers has shift their focus to such advertising medium and less are for payperpost. You may still manage to receive few opportunities in a month but this would not be enough to earn you a living.

Online Survey
Online survey such as OnlineBestSurvey.com is another way to make some brief income. By answering and completing survey form, you will get some compensation for your hard work. There are also times that you get rewarded with gifts or coupons instate of hard cash. This program, you need to work hard for it, spending hours just to earn couple of dollar. Is no easy job !

Some other means of earning money online such as involving in discussion group like MyLot and get paid by reading email. All this will just make you penny and sometime the effort you put in is just not justify to do it.

So am I saying that Earn a living by Making Money Online is all of a scam and there’s no truth about it.
The answer is NO. There are certain truth in making money online and get filthy rich with it. But there’s no short cut or easy way to doing it.

To able to earn a lot online is the same as doing business online. By doing business, as real business such as offering services and trading of products. All this will require certain amount of hard work like building a website (Create a store), buying traffic (advertisement), promotion, campaign and so on. It takes great amount of effort to sell and once the sales get going, money will start to flow in.

The advantage of selling online was that you do not need to have your own product to sell. There are many products that are available online where you can sell and get commission from it. This is what is known as affiliate program. Again you need to put in effort to promote, sell and advertise, and your goal here is to promote the product as much as possible until people willing to buy.

PayDotCom is a marketplace where you can find lots of product to sell with commission as high as 75%.

So what they say, earn a living by making money online is nothing special. It is possible through many mean. But again is not simple and fast. If someone claim that you can make money online and get rich without doing anything, this most probably is a scam.

Get pay to do surveys online.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Many companies engage Survey Company to do field test, to know what people wants and create new products that meets the general public needs. Therefore the information obtained from the survey is valuable to these companies and hence they are willing to pay good money for it.

We as the general public can take this opportunities to make ourselves some handsome income just by enrolling in such program. Of cause the information feedback must be genuine and properly done. A code of ethic here is to give valuable information and not just for the sake of getting paid for the surveys.

Get pay to do surveys online help changes the way pay survey is done. Now just by sitting in front of the computer, you get to do as many survey that is available to you and you can imaging how much you can make if each survey will pay you at lease $10.

Just look at a small picture for a start. Doing 10 surveys in a month with each survey will pay you $10 will give you a monthly income of $100. This money will help cover your electricity bills, ISP services and may have some surplus to spent.

Imagine now if you do a survey everyday, with each survey pays you $10, you will get $300 a month. All you need is to spend about 30-60 mins in front of the computer, filling up forms. That’s nothing too difficult to do right?

If you are someone who uses the Internet very often, this should not be a problem and there are possibilities that you can do more then 1 survey in a day. The math goes on from here.

Wait now, the above illustration is just assuming you get pay $10/survey. What about surveys that pay you more than that? So I think by now you can image how the math sums up and how much money you get to earn just to take part and get pay to do surveys.

So are you ready to get paid by doing survey? Or you still have doubt as it just sound to simple and more like a scam.

Well if you do some research through Googling, you will find lots of information and how true this system works.

OnlineBestSurvey.com is one online companies that will pay YOU from $5 to $125 for Each Survey. It come with a 90 days money back guaranty if you are not happy with their services.

There are people who try to abuse this by not being serious in doing good survey. As I mention earlier, code of ethics here is to give good information and not just for the sake of filling up the survey form and take the money.

So, many Survey agents will impost some one-time charges for those who willing to enroll into the program. This is to ensure that the person who signup is serious about doing business. Of cause the enrollment sum may look big but imagine the return you will get, most probably the first few surveys receive will help cover up the cost of enrollment.

OnlineBestSurvey.Com, is the best online survey that willing to pay good money for each survey done. Sign up now and see your earning grow. If you feel that this system does not suit you in 90 days, they are willing to refund your subscription fees.

Offers : For limited time only, OnlineBestSurvey is offering $40 discount for new sign up.

What is PayDotCom

Sunday, June 21, 2009

If you miss put my previous post regarding what I like about PayDotCom.Com, and why I think think that PayDotCom is a better affiliate marketplace compared to the other, watch this video.

Click Here to Sell Your Products or Become a Super Affiliate

Setting up a marine aqurium - Day 4

Friday, June 19, 2009

Finally, after waiting for almost 3weeks, here comes the day to move in the resident. You may ask why wait so long ?

This is simply because I'm allowing the tank to get cycled. What this means is that once the tank is running with live rock and filter working, we need to give some time for the good bacteria to grow.

This bacteria is useful in removing ammonia and fish wastes. Without this bacteria, new fishes when added will cause an ammonia spike and hence causes casualty.

So after 3 weeks, I do a water parameter test.

1. Water temperature, it was maintain in between 28C - 30C. This is good.
2. PH test, Water ph is maintain at 8.3-8.5, that's good as marine fishes love such PH level.
   
3. Ammonia test. I do not have a ammonia tester, so I tested for nitrite, (NO) which is a sub product of Ammonia. The reading turns out to be good, which is 0 ppm
4. Salinity (water saltiness). Salinity should be around 1.02 - 1.025. Using a hydrometer, the salinity measured was about 1.02. tha's good also but I added abit more salt to bring up the salinity, just in case if I overfill the tank with freshwater, it does not hurt the salinity.

It looks like the tank is all ready to go.

Here's the first resident, 2 orange clown fish. Now don't be too excited to add all the fishes into the tank, cause we are not sure whether the tank is really ready for fishes. This 2 Nemo will be the guinea pig. If they survive, that means the tank is all ready.

Why I think PayDotCom is the Best Affiliate Marketplace on the Net!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Hi

If you are familiar with Clickbank.com (R), or even if you are not but you want to make profits online, then you will want to check this out ASAP ...

While I like Clickbank, and they are a great marketplace... they are limited to many restrictions to sell products or earn affiliate commissions...

Well, there is a GREAT NEW SERVICE now...

It is a new FREE marketplace where you can sell any product you want.

Yours OWN product...

- OR - (the best part)
You can become an INSTANT Affiliate for ANY item in their HUGE marketplace.

It is called PayDotCom.com!

Did I mention it is 100% FREE to Join!

This site is going to KILL all other marketplaces and I by now, almost EVERY SINGLE SERIOUS online marketer has an account with PayDotCom.com

So get yours now and see how much they offer...


OH! - Also, they have their won affiliate program now that pays you COLD HARD cash just for sharing the site with people like I am doing with you...

They give you cool tools like BLOG WIDGETS, and they even have an advertising program to help you get traffic to your site.

If you want an ARMY of affiliates to sell your products for you, they also allow you to have Free placement in their marketplace!

Even better... If your product becomes one of the Top 25 products in its category in the marketplace (not that hard to do)...

...then you will get Free advertising on the Blog Widget which is syndicated on THOUSANDS of sites World Wide and get Millions of impressions per month.

So, what are you waiting for...

Get your FREE account now...


P.S. - Make sure to get your Account NOW while it is Free to join.

Setting up a marine aqurium - Day 3

Friday, June 5, 2009

Day 3 of the setup is pretty simple. All that need to do is to put in the water filter, a canister type I'm using. Fill the filter with necessary filter media for mechanical and bio filtration.

Bring up the water salinity by adding sea salt. Let the water circulate for a while so that the salinity is even. Once the tank water's salinity is stable, add in live rock and let the tank cycle. This will take a few weeks, usually 2-3 weeks to allow good bacteria to grown.

This bacteria is needed to combat ammonia, and NO2. Once the tank is fully cycle with 0ppm of ammonia, then is time to add in the live stock.

So for the time being, I'll just have to wait.

The cannister filter placed on the bottom of the tank

The final setup. May need to add more live rock

If you have missed Day 1 and Day 2 of the setup, click the following link

Day 1 of the setup

Day 2 of the setup

Setting up a marine aqurium - Day 2

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Day 2 of the setup.

Today I'm fixing the cooling fans follow by the lighting.

The cooling fans was a DIY type, therefore it took me sometime to design and modify two tank's partition holder into a fan holder. Once the physical fixing is done, I have to work on the electrical wiring , which consist of a 12VDC adapter.

When the fans are done, i just put on a 2 footer lighting hood that I bought couple of years ago. It was brand new, just waiting to use it.

Once all this is done, the tank is fill up with fresh water and I leave it running for the moment.

Next step will be adding sea salt, live rocks and a canister filter.

Click here to proceed to Day 3 of the setup is ready.

If you have missed what had happen on Day 1, Click here to read on

A crack aquirium that broke my heart

Monday, June 1, 2009

My day started with a shocking finding, my 3 feet planted tank aquarium just crack and burst. By the time I saw it, the tank was almost dry and water is just everywhere. It just broke my heart !

It was a sad day, my 2 years or nursing on this tank just vanish. My 7 years old Blue diamond discus, is striving to survive and so is my newly bought wild discus, just 3 weeks old.

I have to rush to my friend's house just to transfer what is surviving into his tank while I figure out what should I do next.

Guess is back to the drawing board from now on for another new setup..

A crack that not only broke my tank, it broke my heart too.

Setting up a marine aqurium - Day 1

Saturday, May 9, 2009

I have decided to used my existing 2 feet tank and convert it into a Nemo Tank (Clown Fish).

Clown Fish aka Nemo belong to the salt water species, therefore the setting of the tank will have to use the marine technique instate if fresh water technique.

As I'm more familiar with fresh water setup, marine setup is a totally new subject to me. Therefore lots of research was made before I start and I got to say, is another new challenge to me.

Here I document the process and I used to setup.
Day 1, 9 May 09
Perform aquascaping (decorate the tank)

This is the beginning stage. Will add live rocks later when the canister filter arrived. At this moment, I’m just using the HOB filter to keep then water running.

Water is still at fresh state, ie no sea salt added yet as I’m expecting to do a few more found of water change, until the water is clear.


Prepared the base with dead coral sand and some fine white sand. Once the gravel is set, I place the dead coal at the center of the tank. The left and right of the tank will be reserved for live rocks.


Fill the tank with fresh water and let the HOB filter run to clear off debris and dirt. Will replace the water a few time until the water become totally clear. Once the water is ready, I will then add sea salt to get the correct salinity.

Day 2 and Day 3 of the setup is ready. Click the following link to read on.

Day 2 of the setup

Day 3 of the setup

Guide to CPA Affiliate

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

On What is CPA Affiliate, I wrote a short introduction to CPA affiliate. Here I’m introducing some guide for you to know on CPA Affiliate before you start.

In every venture you take, knowledge is the key to success. Without proper knowledge, chances of failure are high and this can be very discouraging.

Running a CPA Affiliate is like running a business. You need to have a plan, a strategy and most important, customers.

Most of all, you need to know everything about CPA affiliate.

We now know that how CPA Affiliate works. It sound simple, it sound straightforward and it sound dead easy. If that’s the case, why are they not many people found success here and make tones of money?

In all Internet business, the key element to success in making money online is Traffic. Without traffic, there’s basically nothing will happen, no matter now good your campaign is, how professional your web site look.

So before you go jumping into the wagon and go all out to build your business, learn how to make traffic first.

To learn more about CPA affiliate, click here to download the free copy of 89 pages report from Gauher Chaudhry. In his report, it explain everything you need to know about CPA Affiliate, including traffic making, market research and tones of resources for you to start with.

This should give you a good start on CPA affiliate and who knows, you maybe next to become a millionaire just form the Internet marketing.

What is CPA Affiliate ?

Friday, March 27, 2009

It has been sometime that I haven't really looked into my mailbox and read all those email. Last week I took the time to do so and something caught my attention. After so many months toying with affiliate marketing, I’m kind of sensitive to the word “AFFILIATE”.

Here was what I found in my email, CPA Affiliate. My first though was what is this? Another affiliate product in the market? But when I read further, this email came from someone who I have drop my contact to some months ago for affiliate tips.

So What is CPA Affiliate ?

I’ve done some research on this and came to understand that CPA affiliates and affiliate marketing are very similar. Before I go further into what is CPA affiliate, let get some understanding what CPA is.

CPA basically stands for “Cost-Per-Action”. In the internet term, it means that when ever a user carryout a defined actions, there will be a certain kind of payment from the advertiser. This usually involve fill up certain details on an online form like email address, interest and so one. The payment can either pay to the user or someone who introduce the user.

Therefore in CPA affiliate, the affiliate will be a person who introduces a user to a certain site and if the user successfully completed a request from the advertiser, the affiliate will get a small amount of payment, usually range from few cents to a $1 - $2.

So why this interest me?

When I was doing affiliate marketing, I basically introduce someone to buy certain product and I get some commission paid on it. However the difficult part here is to convince someone to buy and this is no easy task.

In CPA affiliate, I do not need to convince someone to buy but to just need them to fill out some details. That won’t be too difficult because most people are willing to drop their email address in return for some information. And I get paid for this. It will not be much, maybe just $1 a refer but imagine this, to refer 50 people to a site is much easier then referring a person to buy a product of $50 and get 75% commission from it.

This is what caught my attention and this is what CPA affiliate is all about.

Here's a post I have written regarding a some simple guide to CPA affiliate.

60 Earth Hour

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The world first global election is coming. An Election between Mother Earth and Global Warming. Every citizen on Earth can vote, regardless of all ages, nationalities, race and background.

Give Earth a vote by simply switching off your light for one hour on 28 March 09, on 8.30pm.

So what can you do when the lights are out ? Well, have candle light dinner with your love one, watch and count stars, sleep early or even tell a ghost story to your friends. Its only for 1 hour, how tough can it be ?

Back from Langkawi

Friday, March 13, 2009

Well after spending almost a week in Langkawi, for work and pleasure, finally I'm back home.

How were the days in Langkawi ? I would say, superb, and I guess I should have vacation like this more often.

The first 4 days was tiring, as I have to conduct a training to almost 20 personnel but then the fun kicks in on the last 3 days, where I really have time to be alone with my wife.

Back to reality, having time to be alone is almost impossible, with 2 kids on the hands it is like nightmare. In fact I do not remember when was the last time my wife and me get to be together without interruption. I think was about 4.5 year ago, before our daughter came to this world.

So what did I do for my vacation? Basically eat and eat and eat. 1st meal was at The Loaf (own by our formal PM). The food was expensive but not too bad. We then went for some sight seeing, driving around the island.

When late evening came, I need to go back to Kuah Town to make sure my students get to board the bus to the airport. After sending them off, we drop by a restaurant and had dinner. Ordered some seafood and my wife wanted to have seafood. Being only 2 people, ordering food is not easy and we ended up eating more then we can. Thanks to those tasty crabs.

2nd was could say was a disappointed day. Wanted to go to the cable car as it was the main purpose of our visit to Langkawi, but of all day, it was close for maintenance. So we decided to do sometime else, went to Underwater world. I was not that keen to go but since we have nothing else to do so may as well spent some time there.

Again another big blow, the 3D theater was on maintenance as well. SO no 3D just watches fishes swimming and penguins feeding.

So since we have more time now, drove back to Kuah Town to the jetty and photograph eagle, The main attraction of Langkawi, Dataran Lang (Eagle Square). After photographing that big eagle status, we head back to hotel to have a dip at the pool.

This was our last night in Langkawi and I decided to eat in at the hotel's hawker by the pool. Went back to our room to have a bath and prepare to go for dinner. To our surprise, the rain came and we got to wait till it stops.

After the rain, we head out to the poolside and found horror, all stalls are close due to the rain. So what for dinner?

No choice got to go back to Pantai Cenang and look for restaurant. Ended up seafood again! Well meal was satisfying but day was bad.

The next day, we just prepare to go home, guess without the kids just don't make us feel that good. The heart still misses them.

Here are some photos taken from Langkawi. I'll leave the rest on my photoblog. Check it out if you want to see more.

First Affiliate Sale

Thursday, March 12, 2009

I started internet marketing about 1/2 year ago and started to sell affiliate product from clickbank.

The first product was a weight lost diet program known as Strip That Fat. After going thought the guide and tutorial and some research. I roam out to start my first business.

I was hesitate to go into PPC campaign as it cost me money and I know that through articles writing, I can promote this product ast well. So I wrote a couple of squidoo lenses in Squidoo and started a blog to promote this product.

However after couple of months down the road, I still don't get any sales and was wanted to give up, believing that this will never work.

I left my blog and had stop writing lenses for it.

However to my supprise, I did a sales last month, and I got a commission of $38.80. This is just too great.

I'm so happy now since I have made my 1st sales.

I got to say now. Affliate program does work but it takes time and patient. Is not as simple as what other claim but if you put your heart in it and don't expect too much, maybe you will be surprise on what you may have in return.

If you are interested to know what I have done, feel free to visit this sites

1. Slimming Health Blog

2. Most visted Squidoo lens

Going to Langkawi

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

I'll be going to Langkawi Island for official business tomorrow. Will spent 4 days carrying out my duty before I take another 3 days off for holiday.

Langkawi is an island up north in the state of Kedah. A resort island that fills with fun, sun and histories. It is a duty free island, where all things are free of duty, including beer!

Thanks to AirAsia for offering low price air ticket, I manage to book a flight for my wife who will be joining me after my work is done here. To my surprise, with the low fare plus 20% discount, I only have to pay RM95.20 for a return ticket.

All reservation was made and I'm looking forward for a holiday without the kids, a time to be on our own without the stress of parenthood.

Just wondering now how will I go through the first 4 days ?