This would be my first blog post in 2012. I have been concentrating on writing my Malay blog thus abandoning writing on this blog. However, I’ll try my best to update anything related to technology that I’ve personally experience so far. So last month I encountered an invitation through Facebook:

I’ve never been to a cloud computing summit before therefore I immediately registered myself to attend. The event was organized by iTrain Malaysia. The last event I’ve attended being organized by iTrain was like 5 years ago so things must have been really moving forward from then. I guess I’ll cut my blog post short and show you snapshots taken during the event:

During the event, there was an announcement that really surprised me. iTrain with support from the government will be doing a ‘Free Training for CompTIA Cloud Computing Certification’. Again, I registered myself for that one as well. Basically I’ve been playing around with the cloud for several years already except that during that time it wasn’t known as ‘cloud’ yet. Hopefully I’ll become the chosen 40 selected person to receive the training and qualify for the certification. I’ll update that in my blog if I get selected.

This is a test post using Microsoft Word 2007. I’ve never tried this before eventhough I’ve been using Microsoft Word for like the rest of my working days.

Anyway, I’ll see if I can adapt to the way of how MS Word will publish my blog post.

Until my next blog post.

Last February 2011, 2 TM UniFi agent came to my house claiming that my area is within UniFi coverage. I checked on UniFi’s website earlier but my house address was no where to be found. Since the guy said that registration and the even the installation is free, I then agreed to sign up. 5 months later, after I signed up again online and confirmed that my house address was listed, I received an e-mail that my order was approved and the installation will be done in July 2011. Apparently, TM UniFi’s personnel called me up and inform me of an earlier installation date and I happily agreed to it.

Unfortunately, they broke their promise and didn’t show up on the date. I e-mailed them back and complain about it and received a reply from their customer support. The installation date was pushed to the following week. Here’s how the installation work was done:

There were 2 vans arrived at my house, one contractor is for the outdoor installation and the other is responsible for the indoor installation. Altogether there were 5 people.

I admired this guy who engaged me as the customer and did most of the work compared the other guys. Not only did he brought the barrel of fiber optics cable to the telekom pole, he drilled a hole in my living room.

He then drilled my kitchen wall to insert the fibre optic cables from the outside.

He pulled the fiber optic cables were pulled into my house living room.

The fiber optics cable barrel.

My cracked kitchen wall caused by the drilling. One of the contractor then masked the cracked wall with white plaster.

The guy then sets up the UniFi equipments in my living room.

He and another guys working on the UniFi’s connectivity.

My neighbourhood UniFi box connector. In some places, the UniFi connectivity is located underground.

My house TM UniFi equipment up and running.

The next step after installing UniFi is to terminate the TM Net Streamyx and telephone line. There were several issues I’ve encountered after the installation:

1. I tried requesting for my house number to remain the same. Unfortunately the TM Point staff told me that I can’t have my old phone number to be replaced with the new UniFi telephone number. So there goes my old house number after using it for 14 years.
2. The TM powered wireless router administration page is very opened. Even though I’ve disabled the remote access to the router, until now I can’t seem to change the password (current password is just blank).
3. I spent 2 days configuring the TM powered wireless router to work on my laptop. Only my laptop couldn’t connect to the WiFi, the rest of laptop, PC and mobile devices in my house could connect to the internet without any problem. I tried configured everything I know on my laptop, installed and uninstalled several drivers and software but nothing seems to work. In the end, I hooked up my old wireless router back and my laptop automatically connects to the internet.
4. After consuming gigabytes of data (I am a heavy downloader once in a while), I think one the UniFi devices crashed and both the HyppTV and the internet is not available anymore. This had occur twice already. The solution is to reset the whole boxes (Consist of the UniFi modem, Wireless router and HypTV box; Switch off for a few seconds and switch back on after that) and the UniFi services will be back to normal. Don’t bother tinkering into the admin page or call the customer service unless if you really need to.

If you want to read a full detail story of what happened before the installation, you can read it on my Malay blog here, that is if you can understand Malay language.

Overall, I am satisfied with TM UniFi services. There are moments when the internet line was really slow, I guess not all of the servers can cater for the high speed connection. The only significant improvement I’ve noticed is when watching YouTube where you don’t have to wait for the buffering video anymore. The HyppTV/IPTV is crystal clear and at the moment I’m enjoying all of the HyppTV channel free for a month (1-31 August 2011). That’s all for now. Do leave a comment if you would like to ask me anything.

Cheers.

Lelong.com.my is one of my favourite online shop whenever I wanted to buy any electronic stuff. Earlier this year I entered a bid to buy a Wireless AV Sender which is compatible with Astro TV decoder. The reason for this was because I wanted to be able to watch Astro TV on another TV without having to buy another decoder or hack my way with those confusing wires and accessories. I won the bid at RM116.

Winning Bid-Genuine OEM Pakite 2.4G Wirelss AV Sender Astro Camera CCTV DVD

For convenience matter, I think for a less than RM150 item is quite reasonable. If you check at Lelong (Type in “astro” on the search box) normally the item is sold between RM180 to RM420. I asked the seller to send the item using Air-Pak since it was an option given by him. I top-up another RM10 on the shipping fee for a more secured delivery. The next week, the item arrived.

Airpak Express packing

One wireless AV sender and one wireless AV receiver

Genuine OEM Pakite 2.4G Wireless AV Sender Astro Camera CCTV DVD packager

After more than 3 months using this device, I am quite happy with it. However, here’s a list of pros and cons on this little item:

Pros

Easy straight forward setup, lightweight, instant, no confusing wires

Cons

1. The display and sound reception is easily distorted when interfered by numerous electrical items such as microwaves, fans, blender, drills, washing machine etc
2. The reception distance gets even shorter when there are walls or solid objects
3. I still can’t get the IR remote control on the receiver device to work