Yes, it is finally out! Firefox 3, the long awaited alternate browser has arrived and you can all download it from the Mozilla website for free. This open source browser is meant to replace your Internet Explorer and it has gotten a lot of support from Internet users. Well, I have to agree that Internet Explorer has it’s share of problems and Microsoft seems very reluctant to solve the bugs in their previous browsers and to add new features or to plug security holes in it. I remembered that Internet Explorer 6 was around for a long time and it had a lot of security holes which Microsoft didn’t fix at all. And when you compared to Firefox v2, it was slow and had problems rendering certain websites. Although I have to say, Internet Explorer 7 was much much better. This could be due to competition from browsers like Mozilla and Opera and that they are improving rapidly. Sometimes even faster than what the much richer Microsoft can achieve.

However, if you have been using Firefox, you should have realized that the browser itself isn’t exactly perfect. In fact, it has this stupid memory leak problem which has there for the entire version 2 and updates after updates didn’t solve it. Worse, some sites would crash the browser unexpectedly. This may or may not be the browsers fault, but still, if it works fine for Internet Explorer, I would expect it to work fine for Firefox. Anyhow, I had been using Firefox for about 2 to 3 years now and I have to admit, it’s one great browser. It is reasonably fast (definitely faster than IE6), renders webpages suitably well and it has a lot of add-ons available on the Internet. These add-ons are just like plugins and you can install them to add more functionality to your browser. Toolbars, speed enhancers and other useful tools can be easily created and added to your browser. Plus, they have some of the most beautiful themes for the browser.You can customize the look of the Firefox browser with these themes.

Anyways, I had just downloaded and installed the new Firefox 3 and I am quite impressed. It feels very zippy unlike the previous version which took some time to load up. The main reason why I don’t like to use Firefox is because it loads very slow. It can take up to 1 minute to start the browser. This is definitely an improvement which I can feel. Clicking on the menu bar on the top, you can appreciate the quick response. Unlike the memory leak problem in the previous version, where you had to wait till the browser recovers, you won’t need to wait when clicking. And now, webpage rendering is blazing fast. Dare I say, as fast as Opera? Maybe not as fast but I think if we do a face to face comparison, it could be very close. Other than that, there are some icon changes to the meu bar but nothing too drastic.

I will continue to use this browser and see whether it lives up to it’s expectations. I am sure a lot of people on the Internet is rooting for Firefox to dominate the browser market. Well, me too. Either Firefox or Opera would be just fine in my opinion.

I chanced upon this site recently and I found that it is pretty interesting and perhaps very useful to some of our viewers. It is a document sharing site, a subset of the file sharing sites we see on the Internet everywhere. However the concept is the same, you upload your documents and well…..share it online, where others can view your work. So if you are a writer and would like to showcase some of your literature or writings, then you can make use of this site to do it. They support a huge number of format and you can distribute your work for free.

If you are a writer, I am sure that you may like to keep the rights to your work. And with Scribd, the document you submit to their site, the rights still remain with you. So in actual fact, you are only granting Scribd the right to distribute your work and you can withdraw the right anytime you want. I guess this makes authours more willing to share or showcase their work.

You can upload technical manuals, tutorials, short stories, magazines, school papers, novels, research articles and even powerpoint presentation. I have found quite a wealth of information on this site. I am quite impressed with the quality of some of the works published there. Of course, if you don’t have the right to distribute the document, then you can’t upload it to Scribd.

Anyway, you can visit the site here: Scribd

Hello guys, just a quick update here and a little information for you if you are interested in getting some new furnitures for your home or office. I have complied a list of Singapore Furniture Retailers and contains about 76 listings for you to choose from. If you have purchased furnitures before, I am pretty sure that you know it can be a real hassle. I mean you need to find the right colour, right type (plastic, wood, metal or some other material), quality and style. Look at the interior styling of houses these days, we get a lot of mish-mesh of different furnitures, making the house look out of place and ugly. Of course, it is easier for you to get everything from one store or from one manufacturer, but sometimes it is just not possible or it could be out of your budget. Or the designs are too outdated and may not be in production anymore. So you are forced to source around.

We are also very sick of looking at furnitures from Ikea or Courts. Basically these two big retailers control a large portion of the furniture retail market and well, they are very convenient. Not to say that their designs are bad (in fact, some of which are pretty good) but there are common place. If everybody buys the same furniture from the same store, we are going to see every house in Singapore looking identical to each other. Why spend so much money on your furniture and interior designing and renovation, just to look exactly like your neighbour’s house/flat? I am all for uniformity, but come on, we are not the military.

And furnitures can really make your house look unique and in many ways very stylish. That is if you do it well.

Good news everyone, it looks like we may soon have the likes of an Universal Power Adapter. This means that you don’t need a ton of adaptors for your individual notebooks, mobile phones, mp3 players or anything that requires an external power source or charger. Won’t it be great if one day, you just need a single adaptor for your electronic devices everywhere you go? No longer will you forget to bring one adaptor for your mobile phone or the other adapter for your PDA phone, it’s going to be universal! Well, that is if everyone (those big multi-national manufacturers) agrees on this.

I am sure that if you had purchased an extra adapter before, let’s say for your notebook, you would realize that the price for the adaptor isn’t exactly cheap. In fact, for my most recent purchase of my friend’s adapter (AC to DC Adapter), it cost about S$70! You can get a battery for that price! And if you are going for OEM adapters (with the same voltage and maximum current), some of the head of those OEM adapters are of different size and thus cannot fit into your device. Pretty smart move by the manufacturer as this force you to purchase their own adaptors for ridiculously high prices. But unless you are a techie, you have no choice but to buy it.

Anyways, the concept of the Universal Power Adapter is that the adapter reads the information from the device and from there it gets the necessary voltage and current. Of course, the device needs a firmware with the information embedded somewhere in the first place. Thus support from device manufacturers is very important. Without the firmware embedded in the devices, this adaptor becomes useless. The company that makes this adaptor and supplies the technology is called Green Plug. The main aim of the company is to save the environment as if this concept takes off, we will see much much fewer adaptors and thus less waste. And not to mention, we can re-use the old adaptors for our new devices.

Another advantage is that the lower cost due to there being no need to ship adapters in their products can help attract customers due to the lower price and to sell more products. Not only cost of adaptors, but packaging, servicing, exchanges, repairs are also reduced as we go “universal”. I think that this is really a very good idea. It benefits both the customers and the producers. And it helps the environment. Imagine if you have 3 mobile devices like a PDA, your mobile phone and your Blackberry and each needs their own individual adaptors to charge. Thus, you will need to bring along all 3 adapters on your travels or to your workplace and at home. But now, with just one adapter, you can charge all the devices (maybe not ALL at the same time)! Isn’t it so much convenient to bring just one adapter?

For more information, please take a look at this article: Support Grows for universal power adapter.

Yes, finally the day has arrived - Hoegaarden Clone Brew Day! And this is no a normal brew as this recipe requires some spices which needs to be prepared first. The spices include Coriander seeds, cumin seeds as well as some orange peel, which I have substituted for orange zest (the orangey skin of the fruit). And advise from experts, I have heat up the Coriander and the cumin seeds (till it smells aromatic) before crushing them. As you guys know, Hoegaarden is a spice beer so we are indeed adding some very weird spices. The base of the beer is still wheat beer which I have used Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer as well as the Master Blend Liquid Wheat Malt Extract.

The recipe are as follows:

1. Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer Kit (1.7kg)
2. Morgan’s Liquid Wheat Malt Extract (Master Blend) 1kg
3. Cooper’s Brew Enhancer 2 (Dextrose, Malto-dextrin & Light Dry Malt Extract)
4. Orange Zest (Fresh) from 2 oranges, 10 mins
5. Coriander Seeds (Roasted and cracked) 20g, 10 mins
6. Cumins Seeds (Roasted and cracked) 2g, 10 mins
7. Nottingham Ale Yeast
8. Yeast nutrients

Well, I had skipped the Saaz hops this time because I feel that the spices are way more important than the hops since I believe that they are the ones which contributes more to the flavour of the beer rather than the hops. Anyway, I have read that the Cumin seeds are actually very important to get as close as possible to the real taste of the beer. But Cumin seeds has a very pungent smell and taste, so I have only added about 2g (estimated) into the brew. Hopefully, it won’t be too overpowering and spoil the taste. Okay, I ask it is now time for the pictures!

The 20g of Coriander seeds. I have this at home, so I was lucky. I also have the Cumin seeds.

Both the Coriander and the Cumin seeds are able to be crushed by my mortar and pestle. Do note that I have heated a pan with both the seeds and waited till they start cracking and popping before putting them in the mortar. I was told that by doing this, the smell and the flavours would be further enhanced. I am really keeping my fingers cross that it does.

After I have done my best to pound the seeds. The idea is not to grind them into powder but just to crush the seeds and to expose them. This way, the flavours from the seeds can more easily be absorbed during the boiling process or so I was told.

The grater. Sort of like a cheese grater but this one is much finer which resulted in very little zest but they are very fine. Not too sure whether this is a good thing or not. A finer zest will surely give out more flavours, but there could also be more off-flavours given off during the boiling as well. Yes, I am a bit worried.

My mandarin orange. I used the zest from 2 oranges. Due to the fineness of the grater and the quality of the orange skin, it was very hard work to get the zest off the orange. Took me about 25 minutes in total to grate those two oranges. My arms and fingers are aching now.

So much work, so little zest. That’s all the zest I got from the two Mandarin oranges. Next time I think I will just go and buy some dried Bitter orange peel from the grocery store. Or perhaps just buy a bigger grater and save me a lot of trouble and arm pains.

Those are the Coriander seeds, Cumin seeds as well as the orange zest all in hop bags. Actually they are tea bags which I will later skilfully tied up with some needle and thread.

Well, all the ingredients for making the Hoegaarden Clone. You can see the 2 cans of Wheat Malt Extract and Wheat beer kit, as well as the Cooper’s Brew Enhancer 2 (milky white stuff) and yeast nutrients (the three tea bags are the Coriander seeds, Cumin seeds as well as the orange zest).

That’s the boiling of the Coriander seeds, Cumin seeds and the orange zest. As you can see, I have not add any malt extract during this time as I don’t want to the darken the malt and hence make the beer darker than it should be. However, I have read a lot of bad things about boiling without any malt extract, especially that the grassy flavours that comes out during the boil. Also, most recipes timings for the boil is for those with the malt extract added into the wort. So I am afraid that I might have boiled them too long.

That’s the Master Blend Wheat Malt Extract. This has a lift-up lid.

Oh my god! It’s so dark! Looks like it completely black in colour! My Hoegaarden clone experiment has gone completely wrong! Nobody’s going to believe that my brew is a Hoegaarden clone since Wheat beers are normally white in colour. But what can I do that this stage? I have no choice but to continue making the wort and hope for the best. Perhaps my friends will start to like a black Hoegaarden?

Hoohoohoo! From adding the Wheat Malt Extract to the wort. Again, it looks really too dark for a Hoegaarden clone.

Now, it’s open the Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer Kit and again hope that it is not black in colour. You got to use a can opener to open up the can, unlike the Morgan’s Malt Extract. Don’t know why they don’t just provide a lift-up lid as well. Probably they would like to give you a little more work when you open up the can.

Well, we were all wrong. It is indeed blackish in colour! I am very disappointed by all this. The seller will definitely get a nasty ear-full from me about the cans they brought in! But as I said earlier, no choice but to continue ahead.

Looks like I am making stout from this view. Looks worse than my Blue Mountain Lager. I think I am going to cry.

After adding the Brew Enhancer 2. Hey, at least it looks creamy now and you can’t see the colour of the wort!

These are the yeast slurry I got from my previous brew. They are Nottingham Ale Yeast. If you ask me, they look like pieces of ice cream. If I were to add some M&Ms and perhaps some nuts and chocolate chips, I am sure many of us would think that they are ice cream. Coffee ice cream anyone?

Wow, so many Ice Mountain mineral water bottles! They are used to fill up the fermenter to the 23 litre mark. I had put them in the fridge prior to using them so that I don’t need to use a ice bath to cool down my wort. Just pour the cold mineral water into the fermenter with the hot wort to cool it down to pitching temperature. Would work better if I had ice instead but my freezer was too full to put any big ice packs.

Well, that’s 23 litres of Hoegaarden Clone brew for you. And it is at 24 °C, suitable for me to pitch my yeast. Unlike my previous brew which I had to wait about 4-5 hours for my wort to cool down, this time I used more cold water to get the wort down to pitching temperature.

To make it easier for me to pitch the yeast, I had added some water and mix the yeast with the water. After mixing the yeast, I pitch it to the wort.

Well, after pitching the yeast, I closed the fermenter, added the airlock and then it is done. Yes, I am very disappointed with the colour of the brew, but what is done is done. However, I think I gained a lot of experience doing this one. It is definitely a bit unique in terms of brewing because of the use of spices. And I realized that you should not use liquid malt extracts if you are planning to make a light coloured beer because most of the liquid malt extract will darken with age. And the ones that I had were really really dark. Dark enough to scare away several of my friends from drinking.

Not very sure what the correct name should be. Is it Pilsener? Pilsner? Seems that everyone is having their own opinion which is the correct spelling. I was told by some of the Australian brewers that the correct name should be Pilsener. But it seems that the Americans don’t agree. They claim the correct spelling should be Pilsener. But who really cares? As long as it tastes great, I am all for it.

For my Pilsener, it has been in the bottle for 2 weeks and in the fermenter for 3 weeks. I opened it this morning and have taken a few photos of it. Please take a look below.

Very nice looking head. I would have expected more of a finer foam (head) from the beer but it seems that the Cooper’s Kits usually have such bigger bubbles. Not too sure why, but at least it is not as bad as my first brew, the Australian Pale Ale. Those bubbles look like they have been blown from a machine. However, it is surprising that that Australian Pale Ale managed to retain the head longer than this Pilsener I made. Perhaps it is the glass that I am using? One of the best thing is that the fizz (head retention) stays for a long time in this beer. Again, it could have something to do with the glass I am using.

The actual beer! The colour looks (dark) golden and very clear. You can’t really see it from this picture but if you put it in front of a light, you can see that it is very clear without any sediment or cloudiness. However, I expected a much lighter colour beer, considering that I am using the Pilsener malt which had a very low colouring rating but it turned out darker. Perhaps it is due to the Cooper’s Pilsenser Kit. The colour from the goo in the can looked dark indeed. Well, at least it is not as dark as the Morgan’s Blue Mountain Lager which I had brewed previously. That really was dark. More amber than anything you would expect from the word golden. However, it is true that extract or kit beers will always be darker than those brews done from all-grains methods.

Now for the taste! First of all, it was a lot spicier than I had expected. But the spiciness was not over-powering, at least not to my taste but some people would find it really spicy if they seldom drink such “spicy” beers. Perhaps I had added a little too much Saaz hops into the brew. When I was brewing this beer about a month back, I actually could smell the Saaz hops more than the malt flavours. So….what to do, it has already happened. For the aftertaste, I think it will really go down well with my friends. Although I can feel the dryness of the beer, the aftertaste is not too tart nor spicy (one would say this is not a good point) and it is actually quite delicious. I am sure that my friends would be asking for more after the first sip as I feel that it is easy to drink. Perhaps I should have used less malt and a little dextrose to lighten the beer but still maintain the alcohol. The body was a bit too strong for a Pilsener.

Well, I was thinking of what to do with my Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer kit and I was thinking, why not a Hoegaarden clone? I mean, it’s wheat beer as well. Not too sure what Morgan adds to their beer kit, but if I could get the approximate amount of spices, it could work well. Basically it’s wheat beer plus coriander seeds and orange peel. I already have coriander seeds so I just need to heat them up and crack them (easy enough) and get a grater and grate some orange zest.

The original recipe calls for Bitter Dried Orange Peel, but I think that the orange zest will do just fine. Plus I have some small amount of Saaz hops which should make the beer even tastier! Well, I know that this recipe will not taste exactly like the Hoegaarden original beers, but it should come close. And most definitely, the colour will not be there, since I am using mainly extract which will make the beer darker. Hoegaarden is called White beer for a reason! But other than that, I believe that the taste should at least assemble the Horgaarden beer which we all love and enjoy.

The recipe are as follows:

1. Morgan’s Golden Sheaf Wheat Beer Kit (1.7kg)
2. Morgan’s Liquid Wheat Malt Extract (Master Blend) 1kg
3. Cooper’s Brew Enhancer 2 (Dextrose, Malto-dextrin & Light Dry Malt Extract)
4. Saaz Hops (5g), 10 mins
5. Orange Zest (Fresh) 3g, 10 mins
6. Coriander Seeds (Heated and cracked) 5g, 10 mins
7. Nottingham Ale Yeast
8. Yeast nutrients

As you can see I didn’t use a Wheat beer yeast. Well, I don’t have any and I guess since I am doing this tomorrow, I don’t have the time to get the necessary yeast. And even if I have a Wheat yeast, it won’t really help because for the Hoegaarden, they use a different type of yeast. I believe that Wyeast has a strain which is a very close match to the Hoegaarden variety.

I read that there are people who use cumin seeds as well. Not too sure about that as I didn’t taste any cumin taste in my Hoegaarden. How about you?

Yes, I have finally decided to switch from using PET bottles to using glass bottles to bottle my beer. I just got my Twin Level Capper (S$45) to cap my glass bottles. I think it’s quite a good investment. In the past when I was using PET bottles, I use the screw top plastic caps. They were easy and reusable. However, the biggest problem with screw top bottles is that after screwing like 10 bottles, your hands start to feel raw. And when you are doing the bottling, you will tend to get some beer into your hands and this makes it even worse. And imagine you have to really tighten the caps hard so that the carbon dioxide will not escape. Ouch, doing it for a few times already and I think it’s a good time to change, just for the sake of my hands. Now with the capper, I think life would be much easier. All you have to do is to place the cap on the Twin Level Capper’s magnetic holder, position the Capper on the bottle and then put down both the handles. Sounds tough? Well, it shouldn’t be. A lot of brewers do it this way and I am sure that they are just as lazy as me.

The main reason why I didn’t use glass bottles previously is because I am afraid of bottle bombs. This happens if you overcarbonate your beer (by adding to much sugar) or if you bottle your wort/beer too early. And bottle bombs are very dangerous as broken glass can cause a lot of damage to your hands. I have read that some brewers had large gashes on their hands due to these bottle bombs. Anyway the Cooper’s microbrewing kit comes with PET bottles. So I used them in the beginning. Now, I think I am experienced enough to start using glass bottles. Oh, and I have the priming scoop, which gives me a very accurate amount of sugar to put in per bottle. Hopefully, I won’t get any bottle bombs in my cupboard where I store the beers.

I have been going around my neighbourhood collecting beer bottles. One of my favourite places is our local coffee shop. They have a lot of Tiger beer bottles sitting in crates outside waiting to be thrown into the rubbish bin. So I grabbed them before they were discarded. The good thing about this coffee shop is that they have people to serve them beer. The customer seldom handle the beer themselves. So with this, I am quite certain these bottles are clean and free of cigarette butts. Anyway, once I get the bottles home, I will usually soak them in bleach to sanitize the bottle as well as remove the labels. So far, I have collected about 16 640ml bottles already. Not bad for less than a week’s work, don’t you say? And it’s completely free! Don’t need to spend money on glass bottles for S$1 each. Better spend the money on higher quality malts.

Lifehacker has an interesting post on ways for you to recover your deleted files from Windows. I think you guys will find it very useful. Link to the post here. Well, for me, I too often use PC Inspector File Recovery software. Yes, it’s a freeware. I think it’s a quite capable software, considering that it is free and the user interface is very friendly. After using it a few times (keep your finger cross you don’t), you will be able to use it without any problems.

Another good looking software is this Recuva which the article has a link to. This software looks a bit barebone but seriously, most people using this software just wants to recover their files and not to tinkle with the software or tweak this or that. In fact, most people using this kind of software are the desperate ones. For me, I am using this to recover my company’s files which had been accidentially deleted off by our company staff.

However, the truth is, more often than not, people who accidentially delete off their files don’t know it till much later. Or they didn’t bother until they need the file again. So, by the time I go and attempt to recover the files, it might be too late. The longer you wait, the less chance of recovery as deleted files get overwritten over time. Once overwritten, there is very little chance of recovery. I had always told the company staff to inform me as soon as possible and to stop using the computer if they discovered that they have accidentially deleted off some important files. Apparently, it doesn’t sink it that deleted files are actually on their PC, just marked as empty and ready for some other files to be written over them. And then everyone looks at me like I am a kind of moron.

I got this from my email and apparently I am a winner and will be getting a million pounds!

British Global Lottery
UNITED KINGDOM
(Claims Notification Department)Dear Esteemed Winner,

Ya, baby, ya. Read and weep guys. I am now a millionaire thanks to Global British Lottery and I can do anything I pleased. You see, good things come to people who wait. And I have waited a long long time to strike lottery and now, it has happened. It’s a bit funny that I don’t remember myself submitting my email address to any lotto sweepstakes before but who cares? I am going to be rich! I am going to contact this Alex David guy and give him all my particulars and collect my 1 million pounds! I don’t know what I am going to do with all these money that the Global British Lottery is giving away so generously, but I think that spending it should be fun!

So bye guys, I won’t be seeing you in the near future. Perhaps I will be relaxing at some tropical island somewhere and enjoying the sun.