Introducing - Your Smartphone's new Phone.

Yes that's right. I recently bumped into this new product on the market. It's amazing how technologies evolved these days.

First, there were large ATUR phones, then it gets even larger with additional batteries so that you can make your call longer. Then with the introduction of GSM cell phones, the device gets a bit smaller, then it bulks up again with the additional battery packs. Then came the era of change-able cover phones, and then was taken over by the flip phone being made popular by The Matrix movie. After that back to change-able covers, and now with an attached camera. Now it gets bulky again with all those features like camera, and torchlights.

Nostalgic 80s DOS games - Tapper

Well, i was kinda bored today, and kinda feeling nostalgic, so i end up browsing the great games of the past.

Fortunate enough, i found this one game (apart from many other games) that really amuses me during my childhood years. Well, not exactly childhood, but hey, it was during the early 90s, hippie years for me!

Enough said, here's the screenshot of it when i played it today -

Well the game is called Tapper, or originally called Beer Tapper, and then renamed to Root-beer Tapper, it was a simple game of a bartender trying to fulfill those crazy beer drinking hoots' lust of drinking all the beers you got in the shop, or at least something like that. Well, you'll try to fulfill everyone's need for beer, else they'll go nuts and bash you (yes, the bartender) against the mystery door that they came from. Entertaining isn't it? It's like the 80s version of Diner Dash, but in CGI CGA graphics, and PC speaker sounds and music, it was simply amusing.

Had to run it in the dos-box though, as it doesn't run in Win 7 or anything similar, and as you can see from the screen shot, i'll need to adjust the cpu speed to below 500 cycles for at least a decent gameplay.

So for this, there's only 2 words to describe it - Awesome, awesome. (or was it one word multiplied by 2? or should i say it as totally awesome? or extremely awesome? whatever it is, if u r a gamers or a geek from the 80s, u'll understand what i mean).

Turtle terrarium renovation

It seems that my 2 red-eared sliders has gone pretty big nowadays, the swimming area in the current setup of my 3ft tank doesn't seems adequate for them to swim freely.

So the other day got a chance to visit a shop called Exoreptiles, and got a nice discount for a large Exo-Terra Magnetic Floating Turtle Bank. Martin, the guy from exoreptiles was a friendly guy, and helped me to choose the appropriate size for my tank and my turtles. He'd even gave me a good discount for the item!

And so, it's time to renovate my turtle's tank.

M.A.S.K™ .. the glory of the 80s.

Last weekend, got a chance to bring my kids to the Toy Museum in Penang. Its has moved to a new building, which now resides at Tg Bungah.

The toys inside are not actually some very old toys, like the tin can toys from the 50s or so, but more to a modern toys, i think beginning from the 80s, until recent years. At least the toys being displayed are from my era, and i think it is indeed very cool.

More pics after the jump!

Food for life, food for Arowana!

I think it's best to share how i kept the live food for my Aro. Perhaps it gives the idea to those who wanna kept an arowana at home, that keeping arowana is not just keeping a fish, you'll have to deal with the live foods for it as well, if you wanna have a happy fish of course. Some arowanas might have been trained to eat pellets, and taking care of such aro would be a breeze. All the necessary vitamins are ready in those pellets, such as Hikari sticks and so on.

But my aro is a different story. I tried to starved it for more than 2 weeks, still not eating up pellets, and even went for a hunger strike after that! tried it a couple of time, with no luck, so i give up. My aro seems to be very picky about food, which resulting me to have some variety of foods for it.

So after the jump, are the live foods that i bought, and kept for my aro:-

Thermoelectric Peltier Cooler for my Aquarium

Been working on a d.i.y project. It's a TEC water cooler project, in which i hope it will reduce the temperature of my 5 ft aquarium to at least 3 degrees below ambient. Hopes are high, since the waterblock is so small, i don't think it will have any effect at all to the water temp. Since i got all the things laying around, (except for the TECs). so i just built everything up and see whether it works.

I used 2 TEC peltier coolers, attached to a simple pump, and a PC power supply. Still in testing, or should i say "proof of concept" stage.

What a mess.

Bigger home for Aro (and turtles).

Just would like to archive a quick update on my Arowana's tank. My inital tank setup for my XB arowana was the tank given by my dad, with measurements of 3 x 1.5 x 2 ft. It was okay for the juvenile aro, but since i was planning for a 25 years of lifespan for my aro, the tank will definitely need an upgrade sooner or later.

The initial tank setup. The tank that started everything. It has a simple overhead filter, and i run one extra powerhead with aeration. 

So during the last CNY, there was a great offer by my nearby LFS (local fish shop) for a 5 x 1.5 x 3 ft tank. So the opportunity was grabbed, and so my aro gets a bungalow. lol.