Date:  Oct 11, 2015

(Info For Advanced Users Only)

If you don’t know what is going on here… read these first.

Why I think Amazon Fire TV is the best Media TV Box:  http://miniliew.blogspot.sg/2015/01/amazon-firetv-is-best.html

How to side-load 3rd party APK files onto Amazon Fire TV:  http://miniliew.blogspot.sg/2014/10/side-load-pptv-on-amazon-fire-tv.html

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This is the new Amazon Fire TV.  The one comes with 4K Ultra HD.

It has faster processor and it can do 4K HD video.

Certified Frustration-free Packaging.  It is simple packaging.

Cool.  It comes with a Micro SD.

I bought it from Amazon, so, they know me, they know who am I, so, they pre-configure everything for me as per last Amazon Fire TV box.

And once got has Internet, it will do automatically upgrade.

So, very simple.

1.  Go to the Developer options, turn on ADB.

2.  Turn on to allow 3rd party software installation.

3.  Download Platform-Tools on your iMac or PC.

4.  Use the command line, and ADB to connect and install all the APK you wanted.

And yoo-hoo… Shafa Market and Shafa Launcher is installed successfully.

So, you can install

1.  Kodi, XBMC, or TVMC on it.  To watch your favourite movies, BBC iPlayer, etc.

2.  All the wonderful Chinese App from Shafa Market.

3.  CloudTV for your TV channels.

4.  Use the native Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant TV, Youtube & Vimeo.  The App is so much better than the one you found out there for mobile phones.

5.  You can expand storage using USB hard disk or MicroSD card.

Everything run as per normal.  It is just another TV Set Top Box.  And it is much faster.

Hook up to 2x Game Controller, it shall replace my Xbox and Wii too for quick games.

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Date:  Dec 28, 2015

Good things must share.

I have been using this for almost few months now.

And I felt that my poo is a lot a lot more smoother and more complete.

My entire family uses it.

Squatting with a 35 degrees angle is a good angle to poo poo.

If you have constipation problem, this might help too.

This is the spec.

Bought it from Taobao.  (Please do not ask me to buy, if you want to buy, you can contact my buying agent, Amy Lin, cinagoods@hotmail.com, she will buy for you and help you to ship.  Also, you can buy yourself from other places too or even directly from Taobao).  It is about S$10.  

This is how you use it.  It is the more natural position.

This is the research details.  If you sit 90 degrees the poo poo sometimes is harder to come out.

So, you must give it a 35% to increase the pressure at the abdomen and push the poo poo smoothly out.  hahaha

Of course, you can buy the branded staff.  Hey, it is just a chair, you can buy from Ikea some stool to do the job too.  But these stool design in such a way that you can also keep it under the toilet seat.  hahaha

Have fun!

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Date:  Aug 24, 2015

Yesterday was Jay’s Poom Belt Chapter Assessment grading for his chapter 3 patterns.

As usual, the very confident Jay Jay learned all these patterns on his own, and we have no ideal what he has been learning!

The owner of J.H Kim Taekwondo School is a person who really knows how to do marketing and capture parents’ heart.

For the first time ever, the head master Rivas allowed the parents to witness how their kids took the poom belt chapter assessment.

There are 18 of them made it to the Chapter 3 assessment.  Seems like the number is dropping, that is why no wonder, he wants the parents to appreciate more what their children is learning and hopefully keep the child interests in learning Taekwondo more prolong.

 They sure do a lot a lot of warm up.  This includes those normal stretching exercises.

It also includes almost 10+ different kicking exercise.

Like what I say every time, I want Jay Jay to keep fit, and this Taekwondo lesson are one of the high fat burner exercise for him.

Hopefully in future, when he faced with bad guys, he knows how to kick like this.

I didn’t know he can jump so high.

He actually jump high enough to create the good kicking power.  But I guess later, when he choose his punch to break the board instead of kicking shows he lacks a bit of confident in this kicking as well as the fear of feeling pain kicking the board.  HaHaHaHa...

This is the first test of the day.  Be able to perform chapter 3 poomsae (pattern).  8 months later, when he takes the 2nd Poom, he will need to know all the four chapters.

No problem at all.

The next test is the sparring.  Three rounds.  Here is round 1.

It is kind of fun to look at these non-contact sparing.  Look at how Jay Jay quickly evade a kick and the return another kick to opponent.  Quite cool.

   

This is round 2.  A different opponent.

Looks like they are hitting or kicking each other, but they aren’t.  Cool!

In fact, I had a lot of fun watching this.  

Third match.

Another high kick.

Back Thrust.  But where is the oppnent? hahaha

Third test.  To break the board.  oh.. no… break 2 boards.

And after competed all three assessment, they got a nice certificate to prove that they completed this stage.

After half an hour of hard work.  He finally got his certificate.

Well done Jay Jay.

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Well... Progress. nothing much to report. All going well and no major problems.

I did have a minor difficulty with the flushing system. Seems for no apparent reason to stop flushing and just act as an over flow. Made me loose a few plants which dried up and died as a result. These were leaf plants but the tomatoes and chili plants survived. However it was an easy fix done by reducing the size of the outlet pipe at the bottom of the bottle outlet. Worked well since then.

We ate 5 cat fish a few weeks back and left the Tilapia to carry on in the tank. All fine and seem happy enough. Interestingly the amount of solid waste has reduced considerably. Not surprising as I had reduced the Bio mass by approximately 50%. (I.e removing the cat fish). So much was the difference in water clarity that I decided last week to dispense with the filter system and see if it made any difference. It consists of simple netting and some old geotextile I found laying about on my construction site.

So after 1 week I checked the pH. It was 7-7.5 today so thats OK. I do suspect that the plants are a bit short of nutrients as they appear a bit pale. But that could be me and my imagination just looking for something..... Produce has continued with chili, tomatoes and greens. My single paw paw is still hanging on in there. I really need to make a separate container for it to enable the roots to grow better. New project.

Recently I planted some coriander and last week some new narga super hot chilies. Will wait and see progress.

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Date:  Apr 20, 2015

As a parent, you are in charged of what your child can learn, will learn, would learn.

Opportunity must be given to them when you see they have slight interest in anything.

Remember Steve Jobs?  Remember Bill Gates?  What did their parents gave them when they were young?

If you have not read the book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell, I suggest you get a copy and read it.

After Jay has attended almost 3 years of Lego Robotics programming class @ Wonders Work at Liang Court, I decided to open up a whole new arena for him this year in P3.

I made him build and make his own computer.  :) 

The other day, I saw this Kano Computer Kit while surfing the web.  It was one of the successful Kickstarter project that aims to teach kids how to program at young age.

It is marketed as “Lego Style” of building computer.

Kids love Lego.  Who doesn’t?  

Lego is easy.

Lego is like read the building instruction manual, and assemble the parts together.

So, for Kano Computer Kit, you have all the parts.

And the aim is to assembled everything together.

Of course, nowadays with Raspberry Pi around, it makes it easy for kids to learn computing.  Real computing.

NOT MICROSOFT WINDOWS.  Real computing.

Following instruction is very easy.  Everything is color coded.  And it is easy to build.

The building manual is 52 pages.  All have big huge diagram and simple English instruction.

I gave the box to Jay.  I told him to pack his school bag before doing it while I take shower.  When I come out from the Shower, he already started building his fist computer.  So, I am guessing it is easy to follow the instruction.

Now everything is done, let’s hook up the wire.  All wires and cables are color coded.  Just follow the instruction, and you know where to hook things up.

Last touch.  Hook the HDMI cable to the monitor.  

Turn on the power.  And the computer is powered.  It even comes with its own speaker.  All the instruction will be read out from this powerful speaker.  Very loud.

And the Kano computer boot up.  This is the first time Jay see so many words that he does not understand.

So, I told him, this is NOT WINDOWS.  This is not Apple MacOS.  This is KANO OS, which is a different OS, and it is derived from LINUX.

Linux lives!  This is what geeky daddy will do to his geeky son.  Exposing him to real computers.

The greeting command line come to alive.  This is Jay’s first encounter of “Command Line”.  hahahaha

Jay is learning how to use the touch pad, and keyboard.

The keyboard is a little bit small for Jay.

It is USB charged.  And bluetooth keyboard.

The USB power adapter.  Of course in red color code.

Green dongle is WiFi dongle.  

When there is WiFi activities, the green dongle will blink blink blink.

The heart of the computer.  A Raspberry Pi (first gen) B+ model.  With the casing.

The color coded cables.  HDMI and Power USB cable.

The key is to build it.

All the components.

How every thing is connected.

How you attach the mini SD card.  That is where the OS is stored.

I really love their easy follow manual.  Jay has no problem following the instructions.

Don’t forget to allow your young son to watch too.  Build up his interest.

Isn’t it great that you are greeted by the computer to tell you “Congratulations!   You made a computer!"

What’s next.  That is why the second book is provided.  To teach kids about how to make simple games using python, Scratch and many more.

Step by step, the kids learned how to connect to Internet.

And Jay now going into the Tutorial sessions to learn how to use everything.  It is a GUI so, it is easy for him to navigate.

Linux!

It comes with the lesson and course to get kid up to speed to tell them what is computer programming.  Jay is learning Snake and Pong now.  They use the most unique method to teach kids about these concepts.  By first learning what can a program do.  Using python.  How to configure or change the parameters.  Soon, next weekend, he will learn how to make Minecraft.  hahaha his own Minecraft.

It is that easy.  And he started to learn how computer come together.

How to print “Hello World!"

From simple to basic.

How computer started from text based game into colourful games we see today.

His favourite section coming up.  

Its fun 2-3 hours time for him to play this.

This is how a geeky daddy trains his geeky son about computer programming. 

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