How many of you guys heard before of Glutinous Rice Wine or Jiuniang? It is an traditional Chinese alcoholic drink made from fermenting glutinous rice and it is supposed to be very healthy and nutritious. I have been told that mothers are given small amounts of the rice wine to built up resistant and good health after birth during confinement. Not sure whether this is really that true or not, but who am I to argue with tradition? I mean, if someone gives you alcohol (a sweet nice tasting one at that), why complain? Just drink it. I guess a lot of Singaporean Chinese are just a bit obsessed with this confinement thing, which I think is a bit ridiculous. I mean, what’s the difference between staying in a hot, stinking room and going outside where the air should be much fresher and cleaner other than being allowed to drink rice wine eh?

Well, I have been thinking of making some Glutinous rice wine myself. And from what I read, it isn’t that difficult at all. The recipe just calls from Glutinous rice which is cooked (with a steamer) and allowed to cool. Then after transferring the rice to a fermentation vessel, yeast is added to it. After which a few days later, you will get Glutinous rice wine! It is a cloudy slightly sweet stuff. However, I heard that if you do it this way (without some sort of mold to help convert the rest of the starch to sugar), you will get less alcohol. It should hit about 8% ABV. I believe that if you use the mold (Koji) to help convert the starch in the rice to sugar, you will get a stronger drink. Of couse it will take much longer due to the time it takes to convert starch to sugar by the mold and the corresponding time taken to convert the extra sugars to alcohol.

Oh, and if you are into cooking, this rice wine is used in many Chinese recipes. If you have eaten rice wine chicken or any of those food stuck full with the wine, you will definitely appreciate the wine. Luckily in Singapore, we often have the opportunity to taste such dishes as they are pretty common here. Delicious! Even with the poor quality of food served in Singapore nowadays,the rice wine seems to help camouflage the poor quality chicken and help bring out the exotic aroma of the dish. And when I say it is delicious, I mean it. Once you tasted dishes cooked with rice wine, you will never forget the taste.

The sad part about all these is that not many Singaporeans drink this. When I visit the alcohol beverages section of the local supermarkets, I seldom see rice wine being sold. Yes, there are sake available but even those are few. I guess that is surprising as what the current Japanese craze in Singapore, sake is not even popular. Chinese Rice Wine is usually found in the cooking section of the supermarket.  Well…

I am sure that most of you guys know what is social bookmarking (or social networking) right? I mean who doesn’t know about Digg, Stumbleupon, Friendster, Facebook and so on. These are social networking sites which people from all over the world meet, chat and exchange information. Sites like Digg and Stumbleupon provides an interface for users to come together and share interesting or useful information, news or articles about a particular topic or subject.

And now, you can create your very own Digg site! With Pligg! Basically it is a Content Management Script which allows users to “rate” or “vote” on articles which other users submit. Yes, it sounds so very familiar. Imagine having your own very cool site which everyone gathers to exchange ideas? You will certainly be the coolest kid in your kindergarten.  Na, not really. It is not just for little kids, but adults too can interact with others with the same interest. Do you like meeting others with the same hobbies as you? Well, social networking is the way to go now.

Anyways, if you are looking to create such a site, I would highly recommend you Pligg. If your webhost has PHP and MySQL support, then you can host Pligg based sites. And if your webhost doesn’t support these features, you should change to a better webhost. And I mean it. And for installing Pligg, it’s pretty easy and straightforward. All you need is a browser, FTP Client (Software) and same basic Windows and webhosting knowledge.I have written this tutorial for beginners and if you follow these steps, you should not go wrong.

Your very first step to setting up your Pligg based site is to go to Pligg’s website. From there click on Download.

Scroll down all the way and click on the Attached File. Please note that your version of Pligg might be different from the screenshot shown above. At the time of writing, the latest version of Pligg is the Beta 9.9.5. I would highly recommend you to download the latest version of Pligg as the latest version is usually the most bug free version available. Download the zip file to your computer and remember where you have stored it.

After it has finished downloading, you should extract out the files. You can use Windows (WinXP and above) own extraction software to do that. However, in this example, I am using IZArc to extract my files out. The reason why I choose to use IZArc is because I find it very stable and easy to use.

Now, remember where you have extracted the files to as you will need to modify some of the file names first.

So after you have extracted out ALL the files, you should open up the folder where the files are extracted to. There should be several folders and a whole lot of php files.

Look for a file called “settings.php.default” in the original folder. You will need to rename it to “settings.php”. So right click on the “settings.php.default” file and choose Rename.

Rename the file to “settings.php”

Your next step is to browse into the “libs” folder and look for the file “dbconnect.php.default”. Right click on the file and choose Rename.

Rename it to “dbconnect.php”.

For the next step, you will need some information from your webhost or your administrator.You will need your FTP hostname, username and password. Your webhost should be able to provide you with all these information so that you can transfer files to and from your webserver.

After you ahve connected to your FTP server, you should upload all the files inside the Pligg folder. It is important to understand that you will need to upload ALL the files and folders INSIDE the Pligg folder. Do not upload the actual folder itself as this will create a subdirectory on your webserver. But of course, if you are planning to install the Pligg script on a subdirectory then you should take note of the subdirectory.

I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client. Most FTP Clients nowadays are pretty easy to use and you should be able to follow the steps even if you are using some other FTP software. When in doubt, you should always consult your software manual. Anyways, if you are using Filezilla, you should select all the files in the extracted folder, right click and choose Upload. This will initiate the file transfer.

It will take appromximately 10-20 minutes for all the files to be uploaded. So either you go and have a smoke and come back later or you can just stare at the screen. Please ensure that all the files are uploaded to your server.

After you have successfully uploaded the files, you will need to set some permissions on several folders and files. The folders are “avatars/user_upload”, “backup”,”cache”, “languages”, “templates” and “templates_c”. You will need to give them world-writable permissions. Some call it “chmod 777″. So browse to your”avatar/user_upload” folder on your server, right click and choose File attributes. If you are using some other FTP Clients, please refer to it’s user manual for more information on how to set permissions.

Make it world-writable by enabling all Read, Write and Execute. You can also give the numeric value of 777 (that is Chmod 777).Click on OK when you are done.

Now lets do the same for the “backup” folder. Right click on the”backup” folder and choose File attributes.

Yes, do the same permissions as well. After you have finished setting the permissions, please click on OK to continue.

Yes, now we do it for the “cache” folder.

Give it world-writable permissions.  Click on OK when you are done.

Now for the “languages” folder.

Chmod 777 for that folder as well. After setting the correct permissions, click on OK.

And yes, do the exact same thing for the templates folder.

Chmod 777 yet again. Click on OK when you have finished.

Do the same for the “templates_c”  folder.

Yes, we need to Chmod 777 for that folder as well. Click on ok when you are done.

Now, let set permissions for a few files. Unlike the previous files, we are not setting them to world-writable so you will need to pay a little attention to the correct permissions for them. First, we need to change the permissions for the “settings.php” file. So find the “settings.php” file in the server (which is located at the root html directory or if you had set it, the subdirectory), right click and choose File attributes.

For this file, you will need to Chmod 666, which means no Execute permission is given. Click on Ok when you are done.

Now browse on the “dbconnect.php” file on the “libs” directory on your server. Right click on the file and choose File attributes.

Yes, set the same settings as above, ie Chmod 666.

Now lets go find the “config.php” file on the root html directory (please browse to the approriate subdirectory if you have setup your root as the subdirectory), right click and choose File attributes.

It is now time to Chmod 655. This means that only the Owner can read and write while the rest can only Excecute. Click OK when you have set the correct permissions. And finally we are almost done with setting permissions on the server.

Start your browser and point it to your website with the install folder. So if your domain name is “somebody.com”, you should browse to “http://www.somebody.com/install”. If you have setup your Pligg script on a subdirectory, then you should point to the correct URL. For example, if you have uploaded the files to a subdirectory called pligg, you should then browse to “http://www.somebody.com/plig/install”.

You will be directed to a page like the above image. Click on Next to continue.

Now it’s time to setup your database. However, first of all, you will need to create an MySQL database. If you have no idea on how to create a database, I have written a simple tutorial for you to setup a MySQL database using Cpanel or a MySQL database using DirectAdmin. After you have created your MySQL database, you will have the information to key into this page. You will need to get the Database Name, Database username, password and the hostname (called Database Server here). For Table Prefix, you can either leave it blank or just keep the defaults. This is only important if you are using multiple scripts on one database.

Ahhh….database found and everything is updated successfully. Click on Next.

So everything seems fine and dandy. The database has been updated with the necessary tables and you are about to finish the installation. But don’t go off just yet. You will need to do some “security stuff”. From the image, you can see that they are asking you to Chmod the ” libs/dbconnect.php” file back to “644″, delete off the “install” folder and change your default username and password.

So the first step we do is to change the permissions for the “dbconnect.php” in the “libs” folder. So,go back to your FTP Client and look for the file. Right click and choose File attributes.

Chmod it back to 644 as above. Click on OK when you are done.

Now, lets look for the install folder which is located at the root html directory. Right click and choose Delete.

Click Yes to delete the folder “install”. No worries, you are not going to use it anymore. Well, hopefully.

Now let’s go change your password. You will need to change your password because the default password is pretty well known. So click on “admin area”.

On the login panel, for the username type “god” and the password, you should type “12345″. This is the default username and password. You should change the password to something else to prevent unauthorised persons from accessing your Pligg control panel. You will never know what they are planning to do if you give them such access.

Now click on Profile which is located at the top menu.

Now click on Modify.

Scroll down to the bottom and you will see an option for you to change your password. So key in your old password (which is currently “12345″) and then key in your new password twice. Click on Save once you are done.

Congratulations! You have completed the installation of your very first Pligg based website. Wasn’t that easy? There is actually nothing much to learn when setting up a PHP based script.

Please note that there are a lot of features inside Pligg and you should take some time to explore all of them. You will be surprised at how powerful this script can be. I hope that this step by step tutorial is useful to you. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment here. Thank you.

If you find this tutorial useful, please donate so that I can create more of such tutorials. Through Paypal.

OpenX was formerly OpenAds which was formerly PhpAdsNew which was formerly probably something else nobody can remember. Not too sure why they changed the name. Probably they were worried that the words “Open” and “Ads” (as in Advertisements) together project a kind of advertisement system which is open for everyone to see. Definitely not something someone who is interested in advertising on the Internet would want. Plus, OpenX sounds kind of mysterious. Or maybe the domain name “OpenX.org” was available? Who knows? Who cares? All that is important is that it is a great script which allows webmasters to effectively and efficiently serve advertisements on websites. Think of it as a advertisement (or banners) management system.

To setup OpenX, all you need is a webhost that supports Php and has MySQL database support.  Most webhosts nowadays do have these features. If not, you can definitely do better by changing to another webhost. If I am not wrong, OpenX also supports PostgreSQL. However, this tutorial will not cover it. But the truth is, even setting up the PostgreSQL database is pretty straightforward. In fact, once you follow the following steps to setup OpenX, I am quite confident that you can install any other PHP based script available on the Internet without breaking a sweat. Scripts nowadays have become very user-friendly, which is good as it encourages more webmasters to go and understand more about the programming language.

Anyways, before I go off-topic again, I shall now start the tutorial. You will need some basic Webmaster and Windows knowledge to follow the tutorial. This is meant for beginners who have never installed OpenX before.

Your first step is to browse to OpenX’s website and download the latest version of the script. At the time of writing, the latest version was 2.6.0. You should always download the latest version as bugs and errors have to corrected over time by the developers. Download the zipped file and save it somewhere on your computer. Make sure you know where you have downloaded it to.

The next step is to extract the files in the zipped file out. You can use a third party software to do that. Or you can use Windows (WinXP and above) own extracting software to do it. I am using IZArc to extract out the files. It is a very stable and pretty user-friendly software to use.

Remember where you have extracted the files to. You will need to upload the files to your webserver and thus need to use an FTP Client to upload the files. For that to happen, you have to get the FTP username, password and hostname from your web host. However, there are some webhosts which uses a web-based interface for you to upload files to your server. In that case, you should refer to your webhost for more information on how to do it.

I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client. If you are using some other FTP Client, you should refer to the software’s documentation but the steps should be about the same. As you can see from the above image, I am creating a (sub)directory on my html directory. Basically, I don’t want my ad server to be exposed at the default directory and thus it makes sense to install your script in a subdirectory.

So I have created a subdirectory called “openx” where I will upload all the files to. Note that I am uploading the files to this subdirectory instead of the main directory.

Your next step is to upload your extracted files to your webserver. So if you are using Filezilla, choose all the files in the extracted folde, right click and choose Upload. There are some files which you actually don’t need to upload. Bascially they are the ones in Capital letters. However, in my case, I just upload all the files in the folder. It is not taking up a lot of space anyway.

It may take a while but soon enough, the files are all uploaded to your server. Isn’t life  great?

Now start your browser and point it to your website. So for example, if your domain name is somebody.com, you should type in your browser the URL “http://www.somebody.com/openx”. Of course, if the subdirectory you have created in your server is something else other than “openx”, then you should change accordingly. You will be greeted with a webpage as above. Now click on Continue to well…err….continue.

On the next page, click on “I Agree” to continue.

On the next page, you will discover some errors (in red) which prevent you from continuing. These errors must be corrected first. You will need to change permissions for several folder, the”var” folder, the “var/cache” folder, the “var/plugins” folder, the “var/plugins/cache” folder, the “var/plugins/config” folder, the “var/templates_complied” folder and  finally the “www/images” folder.

So the next step would be to go back to your FTP Client and change the permissions there.

So in your FTP Client, you can see the “var” folder. Right click and choose File attributes. If you are using some other FTP Client, they have similar methods to modify the privileges for the folders.  Look for any options involving Chmod, attributes or privileges.

So, now let’s make the folder world-writable. Or some people call it chmod 777.  So for the Owner permissions, group permissions and the public permissions, you should allow everything. Or just chmod the value “777″.

We would do the same for the cache folder inside the var directory. So right click on the cache folder and choose File attributes.

Yup, chmod 777. Same thing. You will have to do it for all the folders listed by the script.

Go to the plugins folder inside the var directory and do the same. It’s kind of tedious right? If only there was a way to automatically do it without much prompting.

Yes, again chmod 777.

Not enough? You still need to do it for the cache folder inside the “var/plugins” directory. Is there no end to this torture?

How many times do we have to see this screen? Make everything writable as above.

Well, now let’s do it for the config folder inside the “var/plugins” directory. Don’t you just love doing the same thing over and over again?

Nope, nothing new. Chmod 777.

You are not in luck. You still need to do it for the templates folder inside the “var” directory. Right click and click on File attributes.

Well, yet again, it’s chmod 777.

Yes, this is the last one! The final step is to change the permissions for the images folder under the “www” directory. My fingers are getting sore from repetitive clickings.

Hooray, do it one last time. Chmod 777 and you have completed the permissions portion! Sometimes all the hard work you have done plays off! Well not all the time though. Sometimes you just get stuck with a big fat headache.

Now let’s go back to our browser and scoll down all the way and click on Retry.

Yes, everything is done correctly! If you have any errors detected by the script, please go back and correct them. Now you should click on Continue. The next step requires you to know some information about your database. In this tutorial, we use MySQL database as our backend. If you have no idea how to create an MySQL database, please refer to my tutorials on creating a MySQL database using Cpanel or creating a MySQL Database using DirectAdmin.You will definitely need to get the username and password to access your web control panel. After you have created your database, you will be furnished with the database hostname, database name, username and password. You will need these information for the next step.

Ensure that for the database type, MySQL is chosen correctly. The hostname of your database is usally “localhost” and the port number is usually “3306″.  Unless your webhost specifically tell you to change those settings, you should let them remain as default. For the Table names prefix, you can key in anything as long as it is unique in the database. If there is nobody else using the database, you can even leave it empty. Usually I keep it as default (ox_). There is no harm in having a prefix as in the future, you might have other scripts using the same database as well.

Looks like everything is okay, Click on Continue.

Unless you need to change them, you should use the default values. So if you would like the images folder to be placed somewhere else, you will need to edit the settings here. However, most users would not need to change them. Click on Continue.

It’s now time to create the administrator account. Please remember the username and password as you will need the information later to access your OpenX control panel to add your advertisers, your banners and so on.

Yes, happy days. Your OpenX installation is now complete!  You are now free to login into your administrator console and start doing your “thang”. It wasn’t that difficult right? Finding advertisers and making money from them will be your next big step. I guess the tough part is after the installation.

Anyway if you find this guide useful, please leave a comment. And if you can afford it, please donate so that I can write more of such articles.

I have done about 5 to 6 batches of beer since January and most of them I used the Nottingham dry yeast from Danstar. Firstly, it was highly recommended by my local homebrew store for beginners and I trust my homebrew store for such information. Although I won’t say that the owner is something of a beer brewing god but at least he is rather keen on his work and his beers. In fact, all of the beers I done with the Nottingham yeast came out fine. My now very popular Australian Pale Ale (among my friends) are all done with this Nottingham yeast. Those bottles of ales produced a lot of happy and drunk faces. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

The thing about the Nottingham yeast is that it is a neutral yeast, which basically means that the yeast itself doesn’t add much flavour to your brew. So all flavours must come from your hops, malts, grains and other adjuncts. It allows you to play with your hops and malts (as well as your adjuncts) knowing that the yeast isn’t contributing much flavour to your final product. Great for beginners like me to experiment with different malts and hops. In Singapore, a lot of drinkers would more likely drink a lager than an ale. So if your aim is to produce a lager (like) beer but don’t have the necessary equipment to make a lager, then using this yeast will help make it more “lager-like”.

The other advantages of using the Nottingham yeast is that it is a very strong fermenter. My medium gravity wort had completed the majority of it’s fermentation is just under 5 days. My low gravity brew took me about 3 days or even less. So if you are an impatient brewer, then this dry yeast is certainly very desirable to you. Furthermore, the yeast is highly flocculent so you can achieve a very clear beer without much cloudiness as compared to other yeast. I guess this is something which everyone strives for in their beers. Perhaps we are just too spolit by commerical beers?

Anyway, if you have some other yeast which you would like me to test out on my brews, please do not hesitate to send them my way. I am rather keen to test out other strains of yeast and see how much it affects the resulting beer.

Well, I am sure that most of you guys are planning a little trip overseas for your vacation, right? I mean Singapore is so stressful that everyone is glad to leave the country, even if it is just for a few days. Come the December holidays, you will see hordes of Singaporeans and foreigners working in Singapore trying their best to escape from this prison through our airports and across the cross-way into Johor. Well, if you are living in Singapore, I am sure you understand why so many people are attempting to get out of the country. I don’t blame them. Look at how stressful the life is in Singapore. You got to work long hours, face and endure crazy bosses, eat poor quality frozen food, take overcrowded public transport that cost a bomb, breathe dirty smoky air from vehicles, sleep in tight spaces without air-conditioner and have a lot of children because the government said so. A lot of people will break under the strain if they don’t escape from Singapore once in a while. What better time then to follow the crowd and go on a vacation when everyone is on vacation as well. That way, although you know that you are not in Singapore, you can still fell safe when you meet your fellow Singaporeans when you go on tour.

And in Singapore, no matter what, you still got to plan ahead. Yes, you will need to plan where you want to escape to now. Although the holidays are still a few months away, you will have to plan where you travel to, how many of your 10 children and maids you are going to bring along, what clothes to wear, how much money to save, who is going to feed your pet goldfish when you are not at home and which of your children’s university fund is going to be sacificed for the trip. Yes, even planning to go on tour can be stressful. What did I tell you about Singapore?

Anyways, if you are still considering to go on tour for your holidays, please take a look at my listing of Tour and Travel Agencies in Singapore. I have complied quite a number of travel agencies which will definitely help to make your dream vacation come through. And at the same time, lighten your wallet. Remember though, it is always good to ask around the various travel operators first before making your decision. You might even get a great deal!

Ahhh…yes, looks like it is the rainy season again. Not sure what really happened to the weather these days but it seems to always go to the extreme. If you are living in Singapore, I am sure that you will know a few months back, it was just so damn freaking warm. Even after coming out of the bath, I would start sweating like a pig. No, I am not exaggerating. It was that warm. The cruel sun never seems to stop shining the blazing heat onto us. The only escape was to the air-conditioned malls.

Now, it is the exact opposite. Everyday I wake up till I go to bed, the weather is either raining heavily or there is some cloudy thunderstorm nearby. And if you think of not bringing the umbrella along, you will be drenced from top to bottom. Of course if you are driving and the destination has sheltered walkways, then you are probably safe. But if not, it would be more prudent to bring either an umbrella or a raincoat. Anyways, nobody uses raincoats anymore. It looks ugly. So, you are left with umbrellas. And best of all, some of those umbrellas are a fashion statement, so I am guessing the females are very keen to bring out their umbrellas to show off. Still, I would prefer the rain than hot weather. When it starts raining in Singapore, the temperature will go down, making it rather comfortable to work and to sleep.

The thing about the rain in Singapore is that it will often rain very heavily. And even with an umbrella, the bottom of your trousers or pants will still get drenched.  Imagine going to work in the morning and getting your shoes and pants wet from rain. You will spend the next 10 hours in misery, hoping and hoping that the clock will reach 6 and you can knock off and get out of those wet clothes. I have faced this time and again, so I will put a pair of extra socks and shoes in the office. Smart right? Of course you can always use a plastic bag to cover your shoes. But…

This is just a quick update on the Apfelwein which I am attempting to make. The Apfelwein is currently bubbling happily in the fermentor, which is a good sign. However, it gave me quite a shock yesterday because the must initially had no reaction from adding the yeast. Normally for beer brewing, in just a few hours (the most is like 5 hours) the yeast will start to produce krusen and you can see foam exploding on the wort. But in this case, it was dead quiet for the entire day. Nothing at all. In the evening when I checked the must, I was really surprised. I was then tempted to go and add more yeast into the must as I thought that something was wrong. But luckily, I decided not to. I knew that the Cote des Blancs yeast was a slow fermenter and it probably would take longer for it to get ready to ferment. I was right. Just that I didn’t know it would take so damn long for it to be ready.

This morning when I woke up, I saw small bubbles forming on the must. Unlike the krusen you see when you brew beer, they are just like oily slick bubbles being produced and some of them are floating on the surface of the must. And by afternoon time, it was bubbling strongly. Thank the gods!  You should see the smile I have on my face when I came back to see the airlock bubbling happily away. The only thing I found funny is the smell. I can’t detect any alcohol coming from the airlock, only the sweetness of the apple juice. I had expected some alcoholic aroma but none is detected even when I put my nose close to the airlock.

Maybe it is because the majority of the must still consist of apple juice? And when the carbon dioxide is being forced out, the apple juice smell escapes along with it? And it just a few weeks time, I will be smelling alcohol only? Well, I think that would be the most likely case. The good thing is that I didn’t smell any sulfur, which a lot of brewers complained about. I really don’t think that my neighbours would care to smell sulfur whenever they open their windows for some fresh air. Anyway, it will probably take a few more weeks for the Apfelwein to complete it’s fermentation and for me to start bottling the wine. I will update you guys when I am done. Take care!

27/8/2008 Update: Bubbling very furiously now. The bubbles the yeast creates are pretty massive now. Looks like everything is fine. Vigourous fermentation is good. I have also kept the temperature about 20°C which should be healthy for the yeast.

Hi there, it is Saturday and this is the day that I will be making my first wine. Well, hopefully it will turn out like wine. For my first try, I will be doing a very simple Apple Wine and the recipe consists of just apple juice which you can easily find in the local stores.However, the apple juice must not contain any preservatives or it will not work as the preservatives will kill off the yeast before it can convert the sugars to alcohol. So, if you are thinking of making your own wine with the juice, the first thing you must look out for is whether there is any preservatives in the juice. I have purchased the apple juice from either Shop n Save or NTUC and in all, it cost me about S$50. Quite reasonable for a wine, right? I also took advantage of any offers when I purchased the juice, so I managed to save a little more. Note that this will be more like a Cider than a real wine, you will need to expect some cidery aftertaste. The word “Apfelwein” is German and thus not to be taken literally.

The recipe for the Apple Wine (Apfelwein) is as follows:

1. 5 litres Ceres Apple Juice
2. 5 litres Marigold Apple Juice
3. 5 litres Harvey Fresh Apple Juice
4. 5 litres VeGood Fuji Apple Juice
5. 4 litres Cyprina Apple Juice
6. 1kg Dextrose
7. 2 pieces Cinnamon sticks
8. Cotes des Blancs Yeast 5 grams (2 packs)

Yes, the recipe is that simple! Everything except the yeast can be found in your local supermarket. You can substitute the glucose for dextrose if you can’t find it. You can purchase the yeast online from eBay. It took about 8 days for the yeast to arrive and it cost like S$13 for 10 packs. Much much cheaper than if you purchased from the local home brew store. But the advantage of buying from the local homebrew store is that the yeast should be viable. Remember, if you buy the yeast from online stores, they will have to travel long distances through harsh weathers to reach you. So the freshness and the quality of the yeast is not assured. However, for me, I took the risk and bought 10 packs from a store on eBay. Their URL is The Bruhaus.

I guess some of you guys might be more interested in the pictures. Well, without further ado, I will start with the pictures!

Aha! All the ingredients necessary to make Apfelwein (except the yeast)! We have 24 litres of no-preservatives apple juice, 1 kg of dextrose as well as cinnamon sticks.

Ceres Apple Juice. That’s right, it is 100% pure apple juice. The colour of the Apple Juice in the picture is much lighter than the colour of the actual apple juice I pour from the pack. What gives?

Cyprina Apple Juice. Yes, again it is 100% natural apple juice. The most costly of the lot. It is about S$2.25 per pack. Smells extremely nice!

Marigold Apple 100% juice. Marigold, probably one of the most famous brands in Singapore. Everywhere you turn, you will see some sort of advertisement from Marigold. Not sure whether this is a good thing or not, but it was on offer when I went to the store a few days back. I got it for S$1.65 per 1 litre pack. Pretty cheap. And surprisingly, it smells quite nice too.

Ya, it’s the VeGood Fuji Apple Juice. It comes with “100% Vitamin C  Daily Intake*”. Not sure what that means? Well, that makes both of us. Anyway, I read through the package and it comes without any preservatives, so this will go into the must as well. However, I didn’t smell any of the Fuji apple sweetness when I poured the juice out.

Harvey Fresh 100% crushed apple juice. I tasted this apple juice before and it tasted damn great. Probably one of the best tasting apple juice I have ever tried before. Not sure how it will as a wine though.

That’s 1 kg of dextrose! Yes, this will ensure that anyone drinking the Apfelwein will be drunk in warp speed. Come on, don’t tell me that you drink wine to become more sober? That’s like “jumping off from a 25 storey building because you want to touch the sky”!

From what I read, the resulting Apfelwein will be pretty dry and tart, so adding a few sticks of cinnamon into the fermenter will ensure that there will at least be some sweetness.

Yes, it is Cinnamon Stick.

Sorry for the blurred pictures. Not too sure what happened. Maybe I got too excited when I was doing the wine. That’s two packets of Cote des Blancs dry wine yeast.

That’s me rehydrating the yeast. Just use a sanitized container, add some clean water and then pour the packets of yeast into the water. Give it a gentle stir and allow it to rest. Oh, you will need to cover it as well so as to prevent bacteria or other spores from contaminating the yeast. You don’t want that to happen!

After about 25 minutes of pouring the apple juice into the fermentor, I am all done. Took me quite a while because I wanted to ensure that the juice is not split out so I poured slowly.

A close up view of the must. Well, the colour is not what I expected but, hey it should be correct. I really doubt that there is anything which can go wrong with the recipe. Perhaps that’s just the colour of a lot of apple juice.

After pouring in the rehydrated yeast, I then cover the fermentor and will allow it to ferment for about 4 weeks. Hopefully by then it will become a hard cider and kick a lot of drinkers’ asses. I am keeping my fingers cross. I will also be spending a lot of time sniffing the airlock. I read that this will give off a lot of sulfur which reminds people of “rhino farts”. Hopefully since I have added to the must some yeast nutrients, there won’t be any “rhino farts”. Don’t want the neighbours complaining.

And this is the end of my first Wine Making adventure. I will keep you guys informed about the outcome of this Apfelwein. Please take note that the original recipe was taken from Edwort’s award winning Apfelwein recipe. Basically it is the same except with the different apple juice as well as yeast. Credit goes to Edwort.

Yes! It’s now time for me to do Wines! I have been brewing beer since February this year and everything is fine and dandy but I think that wine making is definitely more interesting that beer brewing. Of course, I am not saying that beer brewing is easy or anything, just that I find wine making more interest and the resulting beverage certainly more appealing to me. Well, I am sure that there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me and in Singapore, I am sure this is the case. You don’t see a lot of people drinking wine. They drink mostly beer.  But hey, I say each to their own. If you think that beer is a better beverage than wine, then by all means, go ahead and drink beer.

Anyways, the home brew store (that is iBrew) which sells the beer ingredients is also selling wine making stuff. However, if you visit their website, you will not find any information about their wine making equipment or ingredients listed there. I am not sure why but I guess it should be because their inventory is not finalized yet. Or perhaps they are just too lazy to update their website. Who cares? You can email to the owner directly and ask for the prices. He will be glad to assist you in every way possible. It is just too bad that the other homebrew store doesn’t sell any wine making equipment or ingredients. Okay, so last night, the stuff I purchased arrived and I have taken some photos of them.

Sorry about some of the poor quality photos. I took them in a hurry and it was at night, so the lighting is bad.  Please endure.

That’s the Pasteur Champagne yeast from Red Star. S$6.50 per pack! And it consist of only 5 grams of yeast. Talk about monopoly….

Back of the Pasteur Champagne yeast pack. They have some instructions for you to read up. Basically it is the same as the Cote des Blancs yeast - rehdyrate the yeast. If I were you, I would follow the instructions as well. Nothing too difficult to do.

Wine bottle corker. Not sure how it works exactly. I guess the handle is for you to push the cork down into the bottle.

Sorry for the blurry photos.  I am guessing that you open the two handles to put in the cork at the bottom.Then to ensure that the cork stays in place, you will have to tighten the two handles together. Yes, that’s me guessing.

Ya, that’s the hole where you put the cork and if you push on the single handle, the cork will be forced into the bottle. Again, I am guessing. But it makes sense right? And if I don’t try, I will never learn. That’s the lesson of life I am telling everybody to listen to.

Corks! Not too sure whether they are natural corks or synthetic ones. Anyway,  it doesn’t matter as I am sure that the Apple Wine I am doing won’t be needing such a long aging time.

These are the shrink things you put at the top of the bottle after you “corked” them. I believe that you use a hairdryer and make them shrink fit onto the bottle top. It comes with many many colours but I chose gold because it is very close to the Apple Wine colour. I bought 10 of these.

I bought another Straight-A Cleanser as I have used finished my previous batch. I have 10 used wine bottles to clean and this cleanser will definitely come in handy. Remember, this is a cleanser and not a sanitizer. The difference is that this clears away dirt and grim from the surface, which a sanitizer kills bacteria or spores on the surface. So unless you are planning to use a lot of elbow grease, this will help you get rid of those stubborn grim on your brewing equipment.

Got this 1kg of dextrose to add to my apple juice. This will add some strong alcoholic kick to the wine. If I am not wrong, for a 23 litre batch, this will pump up the alcoholic content by 2%. Who am I to say no to more alcohol?

That’s the used wine bottles which the owner of iBrew provided me with. Not it’s not free, I had to pay 50 cents for each. Ahhh…..businessman meh. Anyway, if you have any lobang for me to get free wine bottles, please give me a hoot. Very much appreciated.

I am pretty sure most of you guys have heard of osCommerce. If not, then let me tell you what it is. It is a shopping cart script meant for web owners to setup a e-commerce store, usually to sell stuff online.  And it is one of the most popular shopping cart scripts out there. When I first started experimenting with e-commerce, I used a manual system to get sales. I didn’t realize that you could get such a power script for free (it’s open source). And when I started playing with it, I realize that it is indeed very useful for someone thinking to setup a shopping cart on their website. In fact, it acts perfectly as a CMS (though bit limited in functionality) as well. I guess that is why a lot of webmasters are so keen on anything open source.

Okay, this tutorial is for beginners to learn how to setup their first online store website using osCommerce. Yes, it’s the bling bling that matters! All you need is some Windows experience, a little webmaster knowledge and the osCommerce script. You must also have a webhost to host your files and they must support Php and MySQL. These are the two major requirements in order for your script to run. However, I am certain that most of the webhost nowadays will support these two features.  if not, then it is high time for you to change your webhost. I have seen “free” webhost offering their users MySQL database support, so there is no reason why your paid webhost is not. And osCommerce is a very easy script to setup and install. In fact, most Php based scripts are getting easier and easier to setup and install.

Now, let’s begin.

Goto osCommerce website and under solutions in the menu, click on downloads. Choose the latest version (at the time of writing the latest version is 2.2rc2a) and click on it to download. You should keep a note of where you have downloaded the file to as you will need to extract out the files from the original zipped file.

I am using IZArc to extract the files out. You can of course use any other unzipping software to extract the files. The steps should be pretty straightforward. If you are using IZArc, you should open the zipped file you have just downloaded and extract it out.

Again, you will need to keep track of where you have extracted the files to. After opening the file and choosing the location you want the files to be extracted to, click on Extract to extract out the files.

The files IN the catalog folder are what you will need to upload to your webserver. You do not need to upload the rest of the files to the webserver as they are more for documentation.

You will need to get your FTP username, password and hostname from your webhosting company. These are the information you need to access to your FTP server. I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client. I am using Filezilla as it is very stable and free. I have used it for years without any problems. If you are using some other FTP client, you should refer to the manual on how to upload files to your server.However, I am pretty sure that the steps for some other FTP Client are rather similar. Anyway, if you are using Filezilla, you will need to choose the files you want to upload and then right-click and choose Upload. Remember, the files are all located in the “catalog” subfolder. Do not upload the entire directory of the osCommerce extracted folder!

After you have clicked on upload, you should go for a smoke break and come back 15 minutes later. No matter how fast your Internet connection and your server’s bandwidth is, it should take 15 minutes or more to upload all those files. Of course, if you are doing it in a LAN, it should take much faster.

After you have finished uploading all the needed files to the webserver, you will need to start your web browser (eg Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and so on) and browse to your website and adding in the “install” directory. So if your website is “http://www.somebody.com”, you will need to browse to “http//www.somebody.com/install”. Of course if you have uploaded your files to a subdirectory, you should do the necessary changes to the URL. Once you have done that, you will be a prompted an error message as above. This message tells you to chmod 777 (world-writable) several files on your webserver. The files are “includes/configure.php” and “admin/includes/configure.php”.

So you will need to go back to your FTP Client and make all the necessary changes. The first file for you to change the permission is the “includes/configure.php”. So navigate to the correct folder, right click and choose File attributes for the “configure.php” file.

Since you are going to chmod 777 for your files, please tick all on Owner permissions, group permissions and public permission. Click Ok once you are done. Please note that some other FTP Client may have different names for setting permissions, it would be wise to consult the software manual.

We are then going to do the same for “/admin/includes/configure.php”. So navigate to the “admin/includes” folder, right click on the “configure.php” file and choose File attributes.

Yet again, we do the same thing as above. No sweat, it’s pretty easy.

Now, let’s go back to our browser and click on Retry.

If everything is done correctly, you should be directed to a page like this. Click on Continue to err…continue.

The next step is to setup your database and provide osCommerce script the necessary information to access this database. If you have no idea how to create a database, you should refer my tutorial on setting up MySQL databases on Cpanel and setting up MySQL databases on DirectAdmin. You will need the hostname of the database server (which is usually localhost), the database name, the username and password. As seen above, you will need to key in all those information before you click on Continue.

The next step is for you to key in your web address and the webserver root directory. If you have no idea what’s your webserver root directory, don’t worry the default should be correct (hopefully). If you are a worry-wart, the webserver root directory is the same as the address for your FTP Client when you access the main folder (that is the folder where you upload your files to). Click on Continue once you are done.

Okay, now it is time for you to key in your store name, the store owner name, the email address, the administrator username and password. Remember the administrator username and password as you will need them to access your osCommerce administrator console.

Wow, you are actually done. However, there are still several additional security steps for you to do. Click on any one of the two links. I have clicked on the “Catalog” button.

You will be directed to the catalog page. You will see that there are some warnings at the top. The first warning is saying that the “install” folder is still on the webserver and that will need to be removed. The second warning is telling us that the “configure.php” file in the “includes” folderis writeable and we have to change that in the permissions.

So let’s start with deleting off the install folder. Again go back to your FTP Client and you will see the install folder. Right click on it and choose delete.

Now let’s go change the permissions for the “configure.php” file in the includes folder. Navigate to the includes folder and right click on the file and choose File attributes.

You will need to chmod 644. That means removing the write permission and execute for the group and for the public. You will also need to remove the execute permission for the Owner. Click on Ok after you are done.

Although it is not stated in the warning, you should also chmod 644 of the “configure.php” file in the “admin/includes” folder. So navigate to the correct folder and look for the configure.php file, right click on choose File attributes.

Chmod 644, just like what you did for the other “configure.php” file. Click on OK once you are done.

Now let’s set the images folder to world writable. The images folder is located in the default directory you upload all the files to. So right click on the images folder and choose File attributes.

Chmod 777.  If you are finished configuring the permissions, click on OK.

Your next step is to make the backups folder world-writeable, that is chmod 777. The backups folder is located at the default directory where you upload the files to. So right click on the backups folder and choose File attributes.

Chmod 777. I am pretty sure by now, you are an expert in setting permissions for files and for folders. Thumbs up! Click on OK once you are done.

You will have the do the same for the “admin/images/graphs” folder. So navigate to the “admin/image” directory and right click on the graphs folder and then choose File attributes.

Well, do the same thing all over again. After that click on OK.

Now let’s go back to our browser and check whether there is any problem. If not, then you have successfully installed your first e-store. That was pretty easy right? The actual steps are very easy and once you have done with one script, you will find that the scripts are very much pretty similar in terms of installation and setup. Anyway, you are now free to explore the functionalities of osCommerce. You will surely be impressed! Go ahead and make some money on the Internet!

If you can afford it, please donate so that I can create more of such articles.