Yo yo, guys! Anyone of you are interested in Search Engines, Search Engine Optimization(SEO) or just the Internet on the whole? Or are you having problems with your computer and would like someone to help out? Well, if you do, you should join WebWobot Search Engine forums. It has an entire forum dedicated to Search Engines and other related topics. Registration is free and the administrator very welcoming. There is a solid core of members already in the forum and that includes me. You can find me under the nick “Solidghost”.

The main reason why I frequent this forum is because I am a big fan of Scolls who created WebWobot. Remember, WebWobot is a one man show and unlike other big search engines with a lot of financial muscle, the search engine and all it’s related components are built from scratch by Scolls himself. Just imagine creating a complete site from scratch! He is the pillar of Webwobot. In fact, he is Webwobot. And he has dreams of making his Search Engine one of the best out there on the Internet. I think with time, it will continue to grow and grow. I am certainly looking forward to the day when Webwobot becomes one of the big boys in the Search Engine market. Perhaps it will even wake Google up from it’s 3 to 4 years daydream.

Although he doesn’t look very friendly, Scolls (the administrator) is actually a very nice and interesting guy. He does PHP, MySQL, Delphi, modelling, fishing, cooking, cleaning, painting and getting drunk. Man of many talents I gather! For me, I can only get drunk. Anyways, if you have the time, please come visit Webwobot and perhaps even join the forum there. He is planning a re-design of WebWobot with the aim of making it very modern and chic so check back often. You will be surprised to see how different Webwobot would look like.

I think that one of my PC’s Power Supply is about to give out. However, I am not very sure whether it is actually the power supply or it’s the graphics card. You see, sometimes when I play games like Civilization IV or Heros V, the entire PC will hang or freeze mid-game. But when I do other stuff like surfing, doing word or excel or even just some programming, nothing happens. It doesn’t crash. Only when I am playing games, the crashing occurs. Naturally, you would think that it’s the graphics card. Why? Because games makes most use of the graphics processor and when it get overloaded it crashes. This could be due to overheating. But then, I switch my graphics card to another PC, every game I played works! I mean I tried playing for hours and hours, but it just doesn’t crash. I the switch the card back to the inital PC, it crashes again. Goodness, it seem to be cursed!

So I decided to test part by part. Taking off the RAM, swapping RAM and even stripping every non-essential component but it still crashes. So I nearly gave up but finally decided to swap power supply. Lo and behold, it doesn’t crash all. Both the power supplies are the same model and type, so it shouldn’t be the wattage that is causing the crash. And it has been working along fine all these while. So there you have it, it was the power supply causing the crashes. I was told by the graphics card distributor that a lot of problems were actually caused by faulty power supplies. It becomes unstable as the graphic card draws more power from the power supply and the voltage and current fluctuates. Luckily, I was about to format my PC and see whether the clean PC crashes or not to confirm it’s the hardware not that software.

Too bad, my power supply is not longer in warranty. Need to fork out some cash to pay for a good quality power supply. I am thinking of getting Acbel whose prices are pretty reasonable and from what I have read on the Internet, they are quite reliable. And their local distributor has one of the most top-notch service in Singapore, something which is very rare here indeed. Actually in my opinion, manufacturers should carefully pick and choose their local distributors as it matters a lot to their customers. Everyone hates a crappy distributor who doesn’t provide any after-sales service like what most distributors in Singapore are.

I have been trying for weeks now to get a real cast-iron grill pan but I don’t seem to be able to find it. It looks like using grill pans is not very popular in Singapore. Nope, not that crappy little edged pans but a real cast-iron grill pan. Those types with real ridged grills in them. The reason why I am choosing grill pans is that it is more healthy way to cook stuff. Oil and fats and whatever juice will flow off the ridges to the bottom of the pan and not into the food. And it also leaves a very nice charred mark on the food. I am actually looking for non-stick grill pan which can handle a lot of heat. The first one I bought is now warped after a few grills. That’s Singapore quality for you. Sure, it looks good and modern in the beginning, now it looks lopsided. Note that I maintain the grill pan very well, I don’t pour cold water on the hot pan. I let it cool down and clean with slightly warm soapy water and it still warps. My friend told me it’s because the metal is too thin for high heat grilling. My grill pan is actually aluminum and not cast iron. Heat heat grilling is needed for cookings thick steaks and making nice charred marks on the steaks.

I mainly use the grill pan to cook steaks. Beef, pork, lamb, chicken, fish and vegetables can all be grilled on the grill pan. If you like, you can also grill burgers with the grill pan, but you should always use a cover when grilling burgers. Why? Because burgers tend to get dry easily, and using a cover stops moisture from escaping and keeps the heat in. And yes, those charred marks look great as well. Heck, for your burger, every ingredient can be grilled on the grill pan. Put your buns, tomatoes, onions and patties on the grill pan and let them cook. Oh, you can’t grill lectuce though. It would simply burn away.

And I love grilling. Don’t you just love it when you put your steaks in and the sizzling sound comes in! That’s the sear! And I love the smell of a well-cooked grilled meal. Just think of the rubs, marinades, baste, sauce and the lovely juicy steaks that come out of your grill pan……wow! I am feeling hungry already.

Anyway, I tried many shops and departmental stores in Singapore. I even tried those specialized for cooking and kitchens. But no one sells a real cast-iron grill pan. Yes, they have a lot of grill pans, but most are poorly designed with poor quality finishing which will ultimately warp in no time. Someone tell me where you can find a good grill pan!

Looks like this update is causing a lot of webmasters a certain amount of grief. From my brief check of many websites, a lot of these sites got a big knockdown in their PageRank. And it looks like directories are the worst to be hit. Big famous directories like Aviva Directory and Alive Directory had their PR slashed from PR7 to PR4! Even Yahoo Directory dropped from PR9 to PR7. But I really feel it for a lot of directory owners, especially those commerical directories. After spending so much time, effort and money trying to get their PR up, Google comes along and start killing them with one brief stroke. I wonder what kind of loses are these big names directories facing as I am pretty sure the cost of administrating and running their commerical directories isn’t exactly cheap. And now with PR dropping like flies, the appeal of directories will not be that great anymore.

Anyway, I really don’t understand what is Google trying to do. And I think it is not fair to webmasters who had relied on Google and their PageRank idea to generate income. Yes, I know that “buying links” is not what Google had in mind when they started the PageRank thing, but it has on going so far already. Sure, it’s cheating and gaming the system. But it’s the system that is fawled in the first place. And ditching PageRank to another completely different “style” and not giving ANY information on what changes they have made is just not right. I think Google owes it to the millions of webmasters to explain what they have done and what criteria they use to calculate PageRank. I think it is not responsible for Google to do a slash like that without any explanation.

For me, I am not doing it commercially so it doesn’t affect me much. And I have faced only a 1 point drop in 2 of my 3 directories. Luckily, I did not spend thousands of dollars to set up my directory. If not, I would be nearly bleeding white just about right now.

Any of you guys are interested in food and have plans to come to Singapore? Well, I have an interesting idea for you! Take a look at Singapore’s Culinary Adventure by academy at-sunrise. No, I am not paid to advertise for them. It’s just something interesting I would like to show to visitors to Singapore. It’s a packaged tour meant for tourists who are interested in Singapore’s food and culture. Think of it like going to sample some of the best dishes in your local market, just in a different country and which costs way more.

And Singapore, eating is king. That’s one of the biggest passions we have here - eating. But in Singapore, food standards can range from terrible to magnificant. The main reason is a great deal of Singaporeans  have very bad taste in food. They will eat anything, I mean, I have seen food stalls selling the worst possible food and yet, have tons of customers. And Singaporeans are simply media dumb. If a local media show introduce a food stall or restaurant, everyone will flock to that stall. That’s the problem in Singapore. Singaporeans don’t really think for themselves at all. Everything is controlled by the media. The next possible reason is Singaporeans are too busy. For working adults, we barely get a hour to eat our lunch. So usually we go to the nearest stalls to get our food. Well, it’s too bad. Stalls which are located in good locations get good business, irregardless of whether the food taste good or not. So instead of improving and enhancing their food, owners spend their time finding and sourcing for good locations.

However, even with bad tastes, with so many different cultures, we are bound to get a few hits. And these really good. I have been to places in Singapore and tasted Minced Meat noodles that would knock the socks of anyone. Yes, some of these great stalls and restaurants are difficult to find.

So I think it would be a good idea to let some expert find these better stalls and restaurants for you. No point coming to Singapore and eating crap from the sewers right? So if you have 5/6 days and a whole lot of cash to burn, try their package. In food paradise but messy and overcrowded Singapore, it’s a good idea to let locals with a little intelligence to bring you to get places to eat. Regular Singaporeans will just bring you to KFC or McDonalds. Truly scary. And they will bring you to places where they sell all sorts of spices and herbs. They even teach you how to create “authentic” tasting Singaporean dishes. Wow.

 

Any of you guys use Facebook? Looks like it’s going to be ad sponsored by advertisements from Microsoft. Yes, have you heard of Microsoft adCenter? No, well, it’s just look Google Adwords. But it is under Microsoft and I have no idea where else you can find those advertisements except on Live/MSN Search. Perhaps it is just not very popular. And I am not too sure whether it’s a good idea for the users of Facebook. I mean, will there are tons of advertisements pasted all over the place? One of the lures of Facebook is it’s very clean interface, if Microsoft mess it up, then they will lose a lot of visitors.

Facebook has about 9 million users which could bea good boost for Microsoft adCenter, which could then mean that Microsoft will start something like Google adsense so that poor little webmasters like me can place their advertisements on our website. That would really be good. More competition for Google Adsense means better payout for webmasters. I have been waiting for Yahoo to provide that service for a long time, but they are still limited to the US.

I believe that Microsoft wanted to sign a deal with MySpace but Google got that deal instead. Sneaky little Google. However, I think Google made a big mistake with MySpace. How many real users are there for MySpace? It’s just a hellhole full of crazy spammers. Facebook seemed to attract a more intelligent crowd too. MySpace is for kids and little girls who like sparkling stars. That’s usually not the group of people which are targets for online advertisements(unless you are talking about flashy ones). I would rather have my advertisements placed on Facebook than MySpace. Even if MySpace has a lot more users and members, it doesn’t mean that it’s better, especially judging from the crowd that frequents MySpace. Trust me, I left MySpace a long time ago and never look back.

What’s an audio ripper you ask? Well, it’s a software which converts CD Audio to mp3 or whatever audio compression format, you know like MP3 or WMA or OGG. That kind of software. It’s the same like DVD Ripper, just that it rips audio from your audio cds/dvds. Actually MusikCube is not just an Audio Ripper, it’s a fully pledged audio/multimedia center.  Yes, just like your Microsoft Media Player, but it’s open source, has tons of features not found in Microsoft Media Playyer and you don’t need to validate your Windows to use it. That is if you using illegal copies of Windows, which you shouldn’t because we all know that piracy is not good and it’s linked to terrorists and mafias.

Anyway, back to MusikCube. One of it’s interesting features is that it learns from what you like to listen and can generate a personalized playlist based on your preferences. So if listen to Spice Girls a lot, then it will help create your very own playlist which may be illegal in some countries. It also has enhanced support for portable storage devices. If you plug in an audio device or a thumb drive, MusikCube will ensure each audio device has a seperate database/playlist. So you don’t need to fumble around to check which playlist is for which device. Cool right? You can use this software to listen to the various Internet radio stations out there as well.

MusikCube allows you to add plugins, just like my previous favourite WinAMP. Hey, in the past, WinAMP is one of the best media players out there. Too bad it became bloatware and I guess nowadays we are looking for lean and mean programs to power our system.

MusikCube is for Windows 2000, XP and 2003 only. Not too sure whether it will work for Windows Vista. If only it can directly burn and create audio cds!

Well, you know Singapore. Here, everyone has to work.  And with that, I mean even when you are old and supposedly retired, you still have to work. Why? Because there is no social security in Singapore. Thus, old people have to leave the house and go outside and start serving food to kids or sweep the floor. But then who takes care of your house? Who cooks when you come back home hungry? Who takes care of your kids and bring them to and from school? Definitely not the busy Singaporeans. So, the only option - get a maid.

And nowadays, we have a lot of maid agencies to choose from. Some are pretty sneaky, some are cheaters, some don’t even get you a reliable maid. So, I guess the most important thing to do when you are planning to get a maid is to get a reliable maid agency. They should have their own training school preferly in Singapore itself, does their own hiring and they should have fast maid replacement.

You can find a list of maid agencies here: Singapore maid agencies. I believe that most agencies get their maids from Indonesia, Philipines, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Anyway, it’s not really cheap to hire a maid in Singapore. You need to pay tons of fees, insurance and government deposit even before you get your maid. But at least you don’t have to face the hassle since the maid agency does everything for you. You just pay and hope for the best. That’s life in Singapore. You pay and hope for the best.

Yes, I finally had the courage to go out, buy all the ingredients and make myself a little pizza! Wow, it felt great. Although the Pizza definitely didn’t turn out great the first time, I think that I can improve on my first attempt at “pizza” baking. However I am actually quite proud of myself, it’s a great leap forward for me. Never in my widest dreams did I believe that I could bake something. I mean, I always thought that if I wanted Pizza, I would just order them. But I guess there is something exotic about making your own pizza. It turned out okay, just a bit too plain and perhaps I added a little too much salt. And I “overcook“the pizza too.  Got it burnt a bit.

Anyway, if you are interesting in baking a pizza, here is my recipe. I grill the pizza instead of baking it. So in my recipe, I used a grill pan instead. I think that this save me a lot of money as I don’t need a oven to make the pizza. And since I like to grill stuff, having a grill pan is really handy for me.

Okay here is the recipe.

1. All-purpose wheat flour around 4 cups. You may need more for dusting.

2. Salt, best if you can get sea salt

3. Dry Active yeast, around 1 teaspoon

4. 2 teaspoon Olive Oil (no need extra virgin Olive oil as we are going to grill it)

5. Warm/Lukewarm water, around 1/3 or 1/4 cup

6. Cold Water

7. Optional: Cornmeal for dusting.

First you need to mix the yeast and the warm water together in a small bowl. Let the mixture rest for around 5 to 8 minutes. After that, add in the salt and the olive oil. Mix them together. After that, pour that mixture in a mixing bowl and add in the flour cup by cup. Mix them all together. You can use a spoon or a fork to add them first. Go in a circular motion and get it mix very well. Add some cold water until the dough starts to be slightly sticky. If it gets too sticky, add more flour. If it gets too dry, add more water. You can start to smell the dough already. Nice right?

Next you need to “knead” it. Get your hands slightly dusted and start working the dough. Keep your hands dusted. Add in flour if needed. Knead the dough for around 10 minutes or so. The finished product should be slightly firm but still very elastic. I think if you see the television, you will see a lot of such dough so I am sure you know what I mean. After that, let the dough rest for 1 hour in a container. You should see it raise about double the size.

Punch out the air. You can do that by punching the dough and flattening it. Then use a rolling pin and start rolling your dough into thin places for your pizza. Dust a little cornmeal to get that very Italian Pizza look. Ensure you get thin pieces. If you want a more chewy pizza rather than a thin crust pizza, then you will need to remember to grill it longer. So the thicker the pizza, the longer you will have to grill. Heat up your grill pan, if your grill pan needs oil, oil it properly. Make sure that grill pan is hot. Then lower the heat to medium for a while and add in your pizza dough. Cook for 5 minutes on one side. Then flip the pizza and start adding your toppings. Cover the grill pan and wait for around 5 minutes.

Note: Your toppings should be pre-cooked. You can add tomatoes, chicken, green peppers……..The possiblities are endless.

Seriously, if you are thinking of getting an antivirus software, you should start clear away from Norton Antivirus family. And if you already have Norton Antivirus installed (because it is a pre-configured system or you are just plain dumb), you should uninstall it immediately. Of course, uninstalling the software will probably take 15 minutes or more because it is such a resource hog and a dead-on system crasher. In fact, I think it should be made illegal in every country. It seems to me that Norton Antivirus has not really changed much over the years. I discovered that it was a resource hog since the launch of Norton Antivirus 2002. It’s been 6 years already (the latest version is 2007) and the software has not improved. I think all they did was add more features to the software. That’s about it.

Yes, the main reason why I would recommend you to remove Norton from your system is because it is a resource hog. It slows down your PC tremedously to the point where you feel like everything is in slow motion. Even if you have a very high end system, I am very sure you didn’t buy that system so that Norton can slow it down right? Free up resources to play that graphic intensive game you just bought! For low-end system, you will be very glad to get rid of that antivirus as you will find that your system starts to speed up a lot. No more waiting for that hour-glass to stop, no more “Not Responding” messages, no more stress, no more long coffee breaks…..

And there are a lot of other alternatives out there. And one of the best commerical offerings is actually Symantec Antivirus Corp Edition. Yes, they are supposed to be the same developers but it seems that the consumer version is pure crap and bloatware while the commercial one rocks. Doesn’t really use a lot of resources and comes with plenty of (useful) features. And if you don’t want to spend money on antivirus, there are several free ones available. These include AVG, Avast, Comodo and Avira. I would recommend AVG and Avira. Both are very good antivirus software.