Finally I have solved the DOS attack problem that is happening to my web directory. If you don’t know what is happening, please read this post. It happened last thursday when my webhost told me that I was using too much bandwidth for the month and I check and discovered that I had used up over 30GB of extra bandwidth. When I investiage further, I found that it will led to 404 error page. So I thought that my site was attacked, either by Denial Of Service attacks or by some other methods. My webhost after studying the situation told me that this is the most plausible  scenario. However, after deeper investigation I found that this is not to be the case.

The problem lies with the script I am using. Actually, it lies with one of the templates (or themes or skin) that I was using for the web directory script. This template had a few bugs which somehow made the script load javascript files which does not exist and every time it loads, additional bandwidth is used. Worse still, the web directory script loads those non-existent javascript files every time a category is accessed. So just imagine if you browse a web directory with thousands of categories! You would have made used huge amount of bandwidth without doing anything useful!

Oh you may be wondering why I didn’t realize this problem till now. Well, previously my web directory didn’t get as much visitors as before. It was not until a few months back before I had a decent increase in the number of visitors to my directory. It could be due to my web directory gaining “authority status”  by Google since a lot of those visitors come from Google Search. Hey, this is a good thing but in this case, it caused my webhost to suspend my account temporarily. I had to convince my webhost to allow me to figure out the problem. And finally on Saturday, I discovered the stupid problem and I modified the script. The redundant javascript files were removed from the code and I sat back and see how the performance was. Well guys, everything looks good from my end. The number of 404 error requests dropped to almost none! Thus, I didn’t see any significant increase in the bandwidth usage and my webhost didn’t suspend my account again.

I really felt relief. I was worried that my webhost will get so pissed off with the overloading of their servers and kicked me off.  This has saved me a lot of extra work in getting a new webhost, changing the DNS settings and uploading the files to the new server. Not to mention the hours lost while waiting for the DNS to propagate properly. However, I have yet to pass another test. Monday is a public holiday in Singapore, so the traffic was low as compared to the normal weekdays. I got a ton of visitors in the weekdays. I don’t get as many as in the weekends. So, tomorrow will be my baptistism of fire when the real weekend traffic comes and hammer at the server. If all goes well, I think that my webhost won’t kick me out.

Don’t you just love the convenience of being in Singapore? I mean, everything is nearby. If you want something, the longest you need to travel is just an hour or 2 hours tops to get the things you want. For example, if you live in Jurong and you would like to buy some fancy high tech gizmo, all you need to do is to travel to Sim Lim Square. It takes about 20 minutes by car or if you are poor like me, it will take maybe an hour or so by public transport. Well, that’s why Singapore being so small is great. Of course, we do have our own problems like lack of space, overcrowding, lack of a proper public transport and so on, but we all can live with that, can’t we?

Anyway, the same thing goes if you are looking for furnitures, either for your new home or just to replace your old worn out furniture. However, where do you go in order to get your furniture? Well, most people will think courts right? Or Ikea. But these are just two big furniture showrooms. There are a lot of other furniture shops offering other models and designs which you don’t know about. Perhaps you are thinking of setting up your home with a certain theme, and since Ikea or Courts are meant for the mass market, they won’t have the style you want. You need some furniture shops that offer these kind of models. Well guys, I have created a little list for you. These are furniture retail shops that have an office or a showroom right here in Singapore.

Singapore Home Furnishings / Furniture shops. These are links to the retailer’s website and you can take a look at what they are offering before you go down. Oh, I am sure that there many more furniture shops than these, but these are the ones which have websites and thus you will be able to check out what they have. I know that finding the right furniture for your home can be really tough. Design, colour, style, material, price and quality are all the things to look out for when choosing the right furniture and sometimes it can be rather frustrating, especially if you are a new home owner. I know from experience that even if you find the perfect one, they may not even have stock for the particular model and colour! I hope that this list will help you in finding the perfect furniture for your home. Good luck!

Well, my streak of bad luck doesn’t seem to stop. First I was stalked by some crazy fool in the beer brewing forums, then my computer had a very serious spyware problem and later my office computers kept on dying on me and just recently my web directory had some bandwidth problem and my webhost wanted to kick me out. I had to convince my webhost that it could be due to some DOS attacks and they at least agreed to monitor the situation first before kicking me off. Seriously, I could change webhost but it would be very troublesome to do that. Change the DNS settings and you have to wait about 24 to 36 hours for it to propagate properly. I could lost a lot of visitors during those hours.

And now, even Stumbleupon is giving me problems. Not too sure whether it is my browser that is the culprit but I get a lot of intermittent problems with accessing Stumbleupon. Ahhh….my problems never ceases. Although it works some of the time, but most of the time, it just goes to an error page as shown below:

First I thought that it was Stumbleupon that is having problems. But when I searched forums and websites, nobody noticed anything wrong with their browser toolbar. Everyone seems to be able to stumble without any error message or database failure. I guess it is only me that is facing this weird problem. Or could it be because of my ISP? Previously I had problems with my ISP’s proxy which gave the error that too many users are using the same IP address. Yes, the same IP address is due to the proxy server. However, the problem seemed to be solved since I didn’t get that particular error message for quite sometime already.

Well, the only thing I can do now is to wait and see whether the problem will be solved either by my ISP or by Stumbleupon. I tried using Internet Explorer and it seems that the IE Stumbleupon toolbar gives the same error message as well. Yes, I know. I am addicted to web surfing. I can’t help myself but to channel surf. Everytime I look at that damn green-blue icon, I can stop myself from clicking on it and seeing where it will bring me. Shit, I am a Stumbleupon addict!

Hooray, I finally got my Star San sanitizer from my homebrew supplier! Well, this is the second attempt to get the Star San. My supplier delivered wrongly to me for the first time (he gave me Iodophor) and he later said that he will send the Star San to me by snail mail. I guess I am not that lucky, I got another bottle of Iodophor instead. And just the beginning of this week the supplier finally sent the correct bottle to me, as you can see from the photo above. Hahaha, nothing will stand between me and my Star San!

The reason why I am very keen to use Star San instead of Iodophor is because I am very afraid of staining. Iodophor is actually iodine, so when in contact with plastics, it may stain it and that’s going to be very difficult to remove. I don’t want my plastic fermenter, stirring spoon and bottles to have stains on them. And although I don’t smell any iodine smell in the Iodophor and it is supposed to be a no-rinse sanitizer, I still find it rather uncomfortable when using it to sanitize my equipment. So I will normally rinse the equipment first. For Star San, I would say I feel much better to use it as my sanitizer of choice.

And that little bottle is going to last for some time. All you need is about 1/4 cupful of Star San and mix with 500ml of clean water to do your sanitizing. Best of all, you can re-use the sanitize if it doesn’t become dirty. Normally, what brewers would do is to use a spray bottle and spray the solution on the surface of their brewing equipment. For bottles, they would use a “water blaster“. It is sort of like a fountain where you insert the bottles to the nose of the blaster and squeeze the sanitizing solution into beer bottles. This way, you will be able to cover all the interior surface of the bottles. And it works much faster than using a spray bottle and trying to get the solution into the beer bottle.

Well, I have already brewed one batch last week, so this came a little too late. But hey, there will be always more brews to do.

Well guys, I have bad news. One of my directories got attacked by someone or something. Not too sure how it works but they did leeched about 28GB of bandwidth this month. I have checked my weblog and discovered that it all goes to 404 pages, which are the error pages. So apparently someone or something is hitting on a page which doesn’t exist at all on my directory and they are doing it pretty frequently. The bandwidth transfer goes to 1Mbps from 10am to 12am Singapore time and for my website, that’s just amazing. I have ruled out normal visitor usage as nobody would hit the 404 page so often (that is using 1GB of bandwidth per day!) and exactly around the same time everyday.

I didn’t discover this problem till my webhost complained that I have been using too much bandwidth. So I checked my weblog and told them the problem. Luckily they did check and later told me that it could very likely be a DOS attack on my site. And I have to agree. My human visitors didn’t increase so much till the bandwidth jumps 28GB for this month as well as the previous month. Those are the 2 months that hit such a high peak. The rest of the time, I barely clock up 10GB per month in total. Plus the search engine bots used up about only 500MB in bandwidth total. So, that scenario of search engine bots hammering my site is not very likely. One of the forumers suggested that it could be due to the fact that my site is too slow (like server overload) and that users kept on “refreshing” my site and thus there are tons of wasted bandwidth. Again, I doubt that to be the case. From my end, the site loads fine during the peak periods. I have tested it myself. It doesn’t seem to be the server load issue. More of a bandwidth issue. Plus, the majority of the bandwidth still goes to the 404 error pages. In my opinion, I think this is also another very unlikely scenario.

I think the most likely reason and as stated by my webhost is DOS attack. However, I am at a lost at what I should do. Other than asking my webhost to deny the attackers IP addresses, there don’t seem to be anything I can do. Is there anything I can do to help prevent such attacks in the future? Or is my webhost not having the proper firewall at their site in the first place? I have been using their service for over 2 years now and I am sure that I didn’t face such problems in the past.

Well, actually I re-contracted and got a phone. Starhub gave me a S$50 upgrade voucher for me to use to purchase a handphone and I used this voucher to get this Nokia Handphone with a 2-year contract. The model is Nokia E51 and it looks quite nice. A little too long (shape) for a handphone but at least it is slim enough for me to fit into my pocket. I have seen other handphones which comes so very thick that I cannot understand how does one carry it around. Unless of course if you carry a purse everywhere you go like a girl or a French guy. For it’s look, I think it is pretty good looking. A stylish metallic casing (I am using the bronze coloured one) and black keypad. The thing I hate about my old phone, it looks too plastic for me. Metallic casings make the mobile phone look very modern.

Anyway, it comes with a ton of features like Wireless Internet surfing using Wifi, 2.0 megapixel camera, email client software, voice recorder, 3G, HSDPA access and many more. What is surprisingly is that I got this phone free! And with so much features, you would expect the phone to be big and bulky, but as I said before it isn’t. I really love the wireless surfing, however the screen on this handphone is just too small for anyone to do real internet surfing. It also accepts MicroSD card for more storage, which is important for people like me who uses our mobile phone to listen to music like MP3 and other audio. The built-in memory is about 130MB. I am also constantly using the email client they have to read my emails. However, this is not blackberry so it’s basically just an email reader and you will need an Internet access to get your mails.

I am trying my best to get used to this handphone but it is pretty user-friendly. I guess all Nokia phones are very user-friendly. Text messaging is very easy but I think my old Nokia phone is even easier. Hey, this one comes with more options than the old phone, so I guess one more step isn’t exactly much to complain about. And everything new needs a little to get used to, right?

This phone comes with a one year warranty. I hope that it won’t be like my previous phone which died a few days after I purchased it. And the worst thing, the repair took 3 weeks to complete! The Nokia service center in Singapore really needs to pull up their socks as I think the poor and slow service will ruin Nokia’s reputation in the long run. I actually wanted to get a Sony Ericsson phone but my friend convinced me that this E51 is a very value for money.

Damn it, I have a few very small ulcers at the corner of my mouth and it is very painful. Everything I move my lips, I can feel it rubbing against my mouth and the pain comes. And although they are pretty small sized ulcers but they are very painful. And they get really swollen and bloated every time after I eat something. Probably the food and the extra movement of the mouth is the cause of this. But what to do? I have to eat no matter what! Don’t you just love it when ulcers appear at the most inconvenient places like the corner of your mouth? I always wonder why this happens. Perhaps this is Karma and it is punishing me for doing bad things. Or perhaps I am just watching too much “My Name Is Earl” TV shows?

Well, the ulcers look ugly. Small in size, but you can see the greenish pus looking thing in the centre of the sore. This is an eyesore. Anyone looking at me will know that there is something wrong at the corner mouth. Plus, the “bloated” and “swollen” part makes the ulcers look more obvious. Now it looks like it is spreading. Just a few days ago, there were like 2 small ulcers, now it looks like they have combined and one more is appearing at the side. Looks like they are reproducing like those bacteria you see on the microscope! Do you guys know why and how does ulcers spread? I have been using the medication every few hours but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Now, I am trying out my mother’s traditional method of putting salted plums “juice” on the ulcers. God, the pain!

I think the reason why I am having ulcers could be because I am stressed. My work load lately have doubled and my boss is putting a lot of pressure on me to get my work done in time and correctly. Don’t these people know these two are mutually exclusive! And if he keeps on breathing down my neck, I am not going to get anything done in time. That and my company is facing some “restructuring”  and financial problems. That has gotten me very worried about my job security. Oh well, I guess this is the kind of life that we will all be facing in Singapore soon.

Anyway, I hope that my ulcers will be gone soon. I want to eat heaty stuff because when I am stressed I need food.

Well, sooner or later we will bound to get such a device. Yup, it’s a camcorder pen, just like what you saw in the movies. You know, those secret agent movies whereby you see cool dudes using very high tech gadgets to catch evil bad guys who wants to destroy the world. And they use these kind of devices to do it. So now, so can you! However, I am not sure where you can find bad guys to record their evil moves, but won’t it still be cool to own one?

Take a look at the 1GB Camcorder Pen.

This top secret pen enables you to record almost 3 hours of video and audio without anyone noticing you doing the deed. Just put it in your pocket like what you normally do with a pen and you can record everything just by moving your body. The video format is in MPEG4, but I am not sure what kind of MPEG4. I really doubt it is a very high quality encoding, seeing that it can record 3 hours with just 1GB of space. But looking at how small it’s len is, even if the encoding is of a high quality, you won’t get much detail out of it either. So it’s a wise move on the manufacturer’s part. Furthermore, the pen works like a normal pen as well. That means you can write with it! Cool no? If I do get it, I am going to sign my bank cheques with it! You can then transfer any recorded video to your PC via USB. It charges through the USB port as well. Yes, USB makes life so much easier.

From the pictures provided, it really does like rather attractive. Yes, it is nothing special and looks like an old but classy fountain pen. I am sure that any would be secret agent won’t want to be caught dead with a ugly ass pen in their pocket. It is being advertised as an “secret agent” pen. Well, it may sound cheesy, just like this blog, but hey, nobody who watches secret agent movies cares whether something is cheesy or not.

Oh it is made in China, so beware, it could be transmitting what you are recording to the evil communist headquarters on the moon and they may be used against you at a later date when they take over the world. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ahhh….it’s Sunday and it’s the day to make the Pilsener Beer I have been yaking about like a silly dog all week. For those who don’t know, I will be using the Cooper’s Pilsener Kit as my main base and add some other ingredients. As I said before, I hope that this will be a light coloured beer, but this will come with a slightly more kick than my previous brews. I think the alcohol content will be around 5% as I have dumped a little more malt into the brew.

The best thing about making your own beer is that you can try out different recipes and even make up your own. I have not used what Coopers has recommended but instead used a different type of malt and add a little more Saaz hops for flavouring. The recipe is as follows:

1. Cooper’s Brewmaster Selection Pilsener Kit
2. 1.35kg Pilsen Light Dry Malt Extract
3. 500g Cooper’s Light Dry Malt Extract
4. 15g Saaz Hops (10 minutes boil)
5. 5g Saaz Hops (after flameout)
6. Nottingham Ale Yeast

I will also be using a tablespoon of Yeast nutrients and some Irish Moss to make a clearer beer. I really hope that the 15g of Saaz will add even more spicy flavouring to this brew which my friends and me will enjoy. Although I am normally not a hop head, let’s pray that the Saaz hops will add a great aroma and flavour to this beer.

Anyways, here are the photos:

All the important ingredients for the Pilsener brew. The Cooper’s Pilsener Beer Ingredient Kit, Briess Pilsen Light Dry Malt Extract, the Cooper’s light dry malt extract, the two tea bags of Saaz hops, the yeast nutrients and the Irish Moss. Yes, I have sew the tea bags myself. Not pretty, but it definitely works.

As you can see, the water I have used is about 3 litres. The reason is that I will be adding only the light malt extract to the boil first. I guess this is like the “late malt extract addition” method to ensure that the wort will not be too dark. You can also see the hop bags in the wort. And the colour of the wort is now slightly greenish. It is green due to the amount of Saaz hops I added to the boiling wort. This is a good thing, it means that the hop flavours are being “absorbed” into the wort. Yes, it doesn’t look too good, but not to worry since when I add the rest of the Pilsen Light Malt Extract, the colour for the wort will be more brownish than greenish. I am sure nobody wants to drink a green coloured beer!

Oh don’t worry, the knife on the side is used for cutting meat like beef.

Yes, I am right. Just that it is too foamy to see. This photo shows what it looks like after I have added the Pilsen Light Malt Extract and the Cooper’s Pilsener Kit goo and restarting the boil. Although there is actually no need to boil again at this point, I would like to make sure everything is sterilized and there are not “baddies” in the malt extract. You can never be too careful about infection. They are nasty!

Well, this is the empty fermenter I am using. It is empty now because I had not poured in the wort - duh! And I have used Iodophor to sanitize all the equipment. In our local medical shops, they sell those Iodine for cleaning cuts and what surprised me was that the Iodophor had almost no smell at all. Not sure what additional stuff they do into Iodophor but I had worried that the Iodine smell will destroy my beer. I was wrong.

Wow, simply amazing, there is now wort in the fermenter. But no, seriously, I have poured in the wort to the fermenter. One thing about pouring hot wort into the fermenter, you do have to be careful. You don’t want to “oxidated” the wort with too much splashing. Now all we have to do is to top up the fermenter to 23 litres with cold water. Oh another thing, I found that this wort smelled much better than the Australian Pale Ale wort which I have done in February. Perhaps it is due to the different malt extract used?

Well, we have Ice Mountain mineral water! It was on offer at Giant last week. About S$0.85 for two 1.5 litres bottle, so I got two. I have also used two more bottles of 600ml sizes. Surprisingly, it is not enough to cool down the fermenter wort to pitching temperature. Thus, I was really screwed big time. Had to pitch the yeast at a later time. Next time, I think I will get more ice cold water.

Here, I am rehydrating the yeast. It is always a good idea to rehydrate your dry yeast before pitching. I normally do it about 30 minutes before pitching. But because I had wrongly estimated the temperature, this was left longer than recommended but I doubt that there will be any ill effects.

So, with no choice whatsoever, I have to use the ice packs to cool down the fermenter. This took about a few hours to go down to 27 °C and only then did I pitch the yeast. And yes, I forgot to aerate the wort before pitching the yeast. This could be a problem since this is a pretty high gravity brew. But “what to do, it has already happened“. Perhaps the addition of yeast nutrients will help it somewhat.

Anyways, let’s see how this goes. I am quite sure that it would work out okay in the end, since the best and the only sane advice from beer brewing forums is to relax and have a homebrew for almost any situation possible. I like it.

Well, as you guys know, I had done a batch of Morgan’s Blue Mountain Lager (Ale) about a month ago. Actually, it was quite a fast one. The majority of the fermentation was done in just under 36 hours but I left it in the fermenter for about 11 days. Normally, I would have kept it in the fermenter for about 3-4 weeks but upon the advise of someone more experienced, I bottled it in just 11 days in the fermenter.

If you remember, I use the Ringwood Ale Yeast so this is not a true lager. That is what probably gave this beer a more complex flavour. Anyway I just opened a bottle today. And I have to tell you, it taste great! No, it was the best brew I ever tasted. But I have to admit I hadn’t taste many home made brews in my life. Seriously, you can feel the bitterness in your tongue but it is sort of a very pleasant aftertaste. Not too strong and just right for light beer drinkers like me. I can see that it will go down well with my friends. For it’s taste, you can feel the “maltiness” and the slight spiciness in the beer. It may be still a little watery probably because I added a little too much water but definitely better than my previous batches. And you can really smell the “sweetish” aroma once you open the bottle. I don’t know how to describe it but it smells very fragrant though. Luckily, I didn’t put too much sugars into the beer since after drinking this brew, I felt that the alcoholic content is more than enough for my friends and me.

Nice creamy head. Unlike my previous Australian Pale Ale which the head had very big bubbles, this one was way better. Of course, it is not as creamy as those Guiness beer, but at least it looked better and feels better when drunk.

Sorry about the poor quality of the shot. I think I might have focused wrongly. You can’t really see the bubbles from this picture. And the beer looks a bit too dark for a lager beer. I had asked Homebrew about it and the owner told me that it could be because Morgan had used a different type of barley malt than previously and the result was a darker coloured brew. But the taste don’t seem to be affected at all!

Another poor quality shot. And it was again focused wrongly and I should have used the Macro mode to take the photo. My bad. I will take more photos after I opened another bottle for “testing purposes”.