Time Machine
I finally got a 160GB hard drive to upgrade my MacBook. I took out the original Apple’s 120GB, put it in an external enclosure and connected it to Pluto (Mac Mini) via USB. Since I already have a 30GB hard drive (code named Nix, a small moon of Pluto) as a backup for doing file to file backup on Pluto, it is quite troublesome to do file to file backup on regular basis. The result is I seldom do backup.
This 120GB hard drive was formatted to become Time Machine hard drive. I named it Charon. Charon is a larger moon of Pluto compare to Nix. The moment I configured Charon to be used as Time Machine’s hard drive, the backup began immediately.
Time Machine is an innovative backup application in Leopard (Mac OS 10.5). The initial backup took quite a long time to complete. After it started, I went to bed as recommended by many users in Mac forums. I don’t actually know how long it took to backup.
After the first backup, the following backup is incremental. Time Machine stores hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until hard drive is full. After a few hours of running, I have got some hourly backup. I tried to restoring some files which I purposely modified. The restoration is really easy.
Charon is a more affordable alternative to Apple’s Time Capsule which is selling at the price tag of RM1,199 for 500GB capacity. Of course, it comes with WIFI and USB port for network printing. I already have a WIFI router at home so getting a Time Capsule will render my current hardware redundant. After all, Time Capsule is more expensive than having Charon. 160GB hard drive costs me RM230 and the external enclosure RM75. Total is RM305. About 70% more affordable than Time Capsule. But after using Time Machine, I find Time Capsule will be a good investment for convenience and data safety. So start making more money and start saving for a Time Capsule.
PayPal Withdrawal
My credit card statement came in this morning. I was happy to see the withdrawal from my PayPal account had been successful and reflected in the statement. Withdrawal to credit cards is a new service provided by PayPal to allow account holders in countries like Malaysia to be able to withdraw their funds. I recently decided to try this service.
This withdrawal paid off some of my credit card balance for this month. I am motivated to write more posts and also looking for new opportunities to setup online business.
Prostate Cancer – The 3rd leading killer in men
Prostate cancer is non-skin cancer but carcinomatous growth in the prostate gland. It is a nut sized gland in males at the neck of urethra; produces a viscid secretion that is the fluid part of the semen.
it is the 3rd leading killer in men’s cancer. You may have or may not have any prostate cancer symptoms at all because prostate cancer is slow growing but at times it can grow quickly. African-American men have the highest risk than Caucasian or Asian men.
Fortunately, there is new prostate cancer treatment available. Sonablate 500 is a non-invasive medical device that uses HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) to treat prostate cancer. This new technology is giving new hope to men in fighting prostate cancer and BPH (enlarged prostate).
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
The Sonablate 500 is not approved for use in the U.S. The Sonablate 500 remains investigational in the U.S. and is being studied for the treatment of prostate cancer in clinical trials in the U.S. FDA has made no decision as to the safety or efficacy of the Sonablate 500 for the treatment of prostate cancer. Currently, the device is approved for the treatment of prostate cancer in Canada and the Dominican Republic, authorized in Argentina, and available in the Bahamas and Mexico.
Dmitry’s 6th birthday party
Finally, the party hour came. This is the day Dmitry has been waiting for: presents, birthday cake and guests. Mommy ordered a Spiderman birthday cake. I had no time to collect it from the bakery so we asked uncle BS to pick it up for us
Joints – Part 1 – The Power Generator
In order to understand my earlier article about Oneness and subsequently other parts of it; the understanding of power generation from joints, especially elbows, is utterly crucial and cannot be disregarded.
Joints are important to our movements and acted as a power transmission center along the transmission lines of our limbs. In martial arts, especially internal system such as Wing-Chun, punching power is generated from elbows. Wing-Chun is mimicking many animals and among them are mainly crane and tiger. Crane being the foundation and essential form of Wing-Chun, it is also one of the three main animals in Uechi-ryu.
Sifu Hoe (my uncle) has been training Tiger style boxing since young. He has many years of training in Tiger style boxing. He also practices Taijiquan until now. According to Sifu Hoe’s teaching, the important factor in Tiger style boxing is to lighten up your upper body but have a firm stance and powerful hips for movement and striking. His description matches Ikyuro perfectly but with deeper knowledge and details. The striking power is generated by forearm, from elbow down to the every finger tips. The upper arm and shoulder are locomotive and transmission lines.
Although the power is generated by forearm, power generation using dan tien (the human body center of gravity in the lower abdomen situated 3 inches below navel) and stance can never be ignored. The ground is the ultimate power generator.
So, we know what being the power generators. The question now is how. How do we generate power using joints? I will discuss in details later.
Sandairyu
Sandairyu performed by Toyama Sensei, Ju-dan (10th dan).
Yummy bread!
LA baked another loaf of bread this morning to make garlic bread for Dmitry’s birthday party tonight. This is the second loaf of bread she baked since our Princess’s bread maker is back last Friday. LA baked a milk bread. The house was full of fresh bread aroma.
Beetle
This afternoon, when I was ready to go to customer’s place, Dmitry spotted a beetle on the ground at the car porch area. It was actually under the car and thank God I did not crush it. We became excited as it was not dead. I swiftly picked it up and put it on a brush and told Dmitry to hold it. And I dashed into the house to get my camera. Here are some photos I took. I put the beetle into a plant pot so that it would not dehydrate. I didn’t check if it was still alive. I hoped it would be still alive. I don’t know its name but I will find out later.
Oneness – Part 1
My training on Okinawa has opened up a totally new dimension of understanding in karate techniques. As we all know, karate derived from Chinese kung-fu. Old grand masters of various Okinawan schools went to China to learn. When they brought back the knowledge, they blended what they had learned from China into their aboriginal martial arts and became karate during the mid of last century.
I learned about Ikyuro or oneness or moving stance / striking together at the same time for deep impact. Locking at specific joints and contraction of muscles at specific areas during striking is essential to generate sharper and more powerful impact. This has to be performed with good stance.
When you focus on the muscles on your calves and thighs, you can suspend your entire body weight and sink it down to the ground via both legs. This suspension provides power generation and stability at the same time.
My understanding of Ikyuro was never complete before I research into Kosonken or tiger style boxing. Tiger is one of the three main animals in Uechi-ryu.
In Tiger style, 六合归一 or 6-in-1 or 6-become-1, is the emphasis of power generation using 6 elements, 3 externals and 3 internals. The 3 external elements are body, foundation and stance. The 3 internal elements are 精 (jing) or essence, 气 (qi) or energy and 神 (shen) or internal organs, bones fresh and blood.
If you have watched carefully the Sandairyu performance of Toyama Sensei, he has all these 6 elements in one body, one mind and one soul.
Shoulder bursitis
I had shoulder pain since March. Initially, it began at my left shoulder after waking up one morning. The pain was not too serious until recently (for the past two weeks), I had lousy sleep. Both of my shoulders were aching and often woke me up in the middle of the night. I thought it was some kind of spraining and it would go away after good rest with less training. But it seems to self-exacerbate. The pain was getting more intense every night.
Last night, I read articles about shoulder bursitis or rotator cuff injuries and treatment. After reading these articles, I decided to give it a try. I applied Fastum gel (Ketoprofen) on both shoulders. Guess what? I had the best sleep ever since March. I woke up early this morning without any pain.
Fastum is used to relief localized pain of arthritis, rheumatism or sports injury. I should have acted earlier.
On and off, I had been doing some wauke spontaneously while I was thinking or working on some programming problems. Some kind of off-my-mind of physical activities after sitting in front of computer for too long. I guess it was the effect of banging my head on the keyboard and I lost sense of safety. Without doing proper stretching, I performed wauke with speed and force as in a counter attack situation. That could have torn my muscles or tendons on the bursa and I overlook the seriousness of the pain. How insanely I was!
Alright, now I am on Ketoprofen and I am going to apply it for the second time. Hope my shoulders will recover in a month or two.
Nice bread!
Finally, our Princess bread maker was back last Friday. The authorized service center, Pensonic, had its service man to deliver to our home. Read about the stories here and here.
Today, we woke up with a loaf of fresh and hot wholemeal bread.
China’s proven world class competency
During the snow hazard in China this February, the Chinese government had successfully managed the natural disaster and crisis with much professionalism in such a short period of time. According to an unconfirmed source, the Chinese government managed to develop a Disaster Management System in just 5 days. 75 software engineers from the Chinese military worked around the clock for 5 days to bring up a web based Disaster Management System to collect, manage, disseminate, coordinate, and to provide command and control to the military disaster relieve team during the recent snow hazard.
The system was developed using Ada, AWS (Ada Web Server) with a little of PHP and Perl. The system deploys a MySQL database running on Linux. The system is hooked up to air-borne SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) for real-time acquisition of landscaping information in snow hazard affected area to help assessing the damage of rail ways, roads, housing and forest. The Chinese army engineering company was dispatched by the system to areas in need of assistance.
I have yet to receive further details of how the system works and probably will not. Anyway, that shows the Chinese ability and responsiveness in dealing with natural disaster. Hail China!
Fast-Teks Computer Repair
Fast-Teks is a north-america based company offering convenient, easy and low cost business computer repair and residential computer repair. With their certified technicians, Fast-Teks provides best in class computer repair service and other computing services at the lowest affordable rate. Short to long term computer and software training support are just a phone call away. Fast-Teks also offers franchise opportunity if you are looking for a business opportunity in computer hardware repair and support services.
An easy way to withdraw from PayPal
Payment agent such as PayPal has become very popular over the few years. It has been an easy and convenient way to perform online monetary transactions. Whether you are buying or selling on the Internet, PayPal has been your pal to help you disbursing or accepting funds.
I have received funds from writing marketing posts but the withdrawal process has been daunting. PayPal does not payout via wire transfer to banks in Malaysia. The only way was to open a bank account in countries like Hong Kong or Singapore being the nearest.
Now, PayPal offers to pay to your credit cards with a minimum fee of US$5 per transaction. That provides an easy and convenient way for bloggers like me in Malaysia to receive funds.
Looking for Windows web hosting?
If you Google for “Windows web hosting”, it returns 3,260,000 or more of possible websites providing Windows base web hosting services. These web hosting company offers a wide range of hosting plans and offers. To skim through all these searches for a right plan is not an easy task and usually daunting.
WebHostingChoice.com provides you a competitive list of windows hosting plans and company. The website also provides information about scam, domains, dedicated server, and a lot more in its learning center to help you understand jargons of the web hosting. You can search or browse web hosting services by features. Perfect for beginners to learn about web hosting to avoid pitfalls that could possibly hamper your website traffic and popularity. It saves you time and money. Try it out today.
If you are running a web hosting service, you can advertise your hosting service here by submitting your web hosting company details. A great way to start your web hosting business from home and let your website and web server monetize for you!
What else? You can subscribe to WebHostingChoice.com newsletter by submitting your email address to receive up-to-date web hosting business trends and information. You will never be left behind and always ahead for the latest offerings.
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