Rant & Raves

The other day I took Jackie the Golden Retriever to Hollys Coffee located at Cineleisure, Damansara. (located next to McDonalds)

Now, Hollys Coffee is a Korean coffee joint and they are pet-friendly. The manager (korean girl), the owner (korean guy) and the owner’s wife all met Jackie before and they fell in love with him. Well, who can blame them for Jackie’s innocent and good looking face! What’s more after I have shown them the tricks that Jackie could do (must have treats for that), they were amazed at his ability and fell deeper in love with him!

Anyway, they gave me words that I can bring my dogs to Hollys Coffee anytime I want and I should tell my friends too! So, after the photo-shoot session (yes, our Jackie is the main man in the photo-shot session) with the manager and owners, we finally able to sit down to enjoy our cuppa of java.

Hehehe. I am smiling!

Hahaha! I’m having my coffee break!

Dude! Enough of the photo taking! Gimme cookies!

Don’t laugh at my short legs. I am super duper popular okay?

Now, this is a new place where you can bring your beloved dogs/cats. The coffee there is of good quality stuff and it is reasonably priced (translation: cheaper than Starbucks). Unfortunately, its ONLY a coffee house and there’s nothing much to eat (besides the cakes and cookies). Fret not, they are opening a new Hollys Restaurant in Sri Hatamas (or Mont Kiara) area soon and they told me that new place is pet-friendly as well!

So spread the words and bring your pets to Hollys Cafe at Cineleisure!

Petronas Car Craze Contest is back!!!

Click on the image for more information.

This time around, the monthly prizes include:
1 unit of BMW 320i (E90) AC Schnitzer
1 unit of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 9
1 unit of Subaru Impreza
1 unit of Honda Civic Type R
1 unit of Mini Cooper S
1 unit of Audi TT Coupe Quattro

On top of that, there is a total of RM1 million cash give out to weekly winners.

To participate in this contest, it is simple. Just charge a minimum of RM20.00 at Petronas Station using your credit card (Affin Bank, Alliance Bank, AM Bank, Bank Islam, CIMB Bank, EON Bank, Hong Leong Bank, Maybank, Public Bank and RHB Bank), SmartPay cardholders and Kad Mesra cardholders and the participants must be Malaysian citizens aged 18 years and above. Every RM20.00 spent is eligible for 1 contest entry.

To be honest, I am a Shell user and I have been using Shell for years. Don’t ask me why I don’t go to Petronas because I just don’t know. Maybe its because my parents had been using Shell for years so I am just following suit (powerful brand royalty here). But I am aiming the BMW 320i (E90) AC Schnitzer *drools* so I guess I will head to Petronas to refill my petrol to gain the contest entry for the BEEEE EMMM.

If you want more information, click here or if you want to find out more about the Terms and Conditions, click here.

Due to some plugin incompatability issues, the blog has been down for more than 12 hours. Sorry for the downtime but everything is up and running now.

I am baffled.

I looked at the Nuffnang ad units for my blog, and the earning, I have no idea how it works.

First, they said it depends on viewers traffic. I am getting more traffic flow into my blog, not by big count, but the earning I got was actually down by 25% while my traffic increased by around 4%. So does it mean that the more traffic you get, the less you earn? Damn, that girl whom called herself xiasui xia xue must be earning pennies right now. And poor Kenny Sia, he must be owing Nuffnang loads of money now.

By the way, there are periods that I don’t get paid. Take a look at the picture below.

Notice the breaks in between December and January? There are 2 weeks when there’s no income. Nothing at all. Well, the last time I checked, my blog was still serving advertisement from Nuffnang during that 2 weeks period. Does that mean I am serving these ads for free?

Or does it mean that Nuffnang tracks the traffic and only those originated from Malaysia and Singapore counts for the ads earning pay out? I have no idea.

No, I am not trying to bitch on Nuffnang. I just hope someone can explain to me how it works, and why I am not getting any paid out during that 2 weeks period. Besides, my ads earnings are so measly that it doesn’t make a slight difference to me, but I just want to understand how it works and I just need an honest explanation.

So anyone can explain to me how it works?

The follow section is updated on Jan 19 @ 9:57pm

Let me clarify about my confusion.

If you were to dig through Nuffnang FAQ section, you will see this…

a) Cost Per Unique Visitor Ads
Earnings for Cost Per Unique Visitor Ads are calculated based on the number of unique visitors to a blog when an ad campaign is being run. Basically, you have to achieve a minimum amount of 20 unique visitors to your blog and maintain that amount in order to be in the running to receive Cost Per Unique Visitor Ads. Then, you can sit back and relax while our advertisers select the blogs on which to run their ad campaigns on. Should you be selected, you will be notified by email based on the type and the duration of the ad campaign.

b) CPC Ads
Any blogger registered with Nuffnang is automatically eligible run have CPC Ads. You will be paid each time the ad is clicked on and your earnings will appear at the end of the week.
In spite of running CPC ads, Cost Per Unique Visitor ads will always be given priority since in the past we have found that that Cost Per Unique Visitor ads seem to pay more since they don’t depend on the number of times your user clicks on your ads.
The amount of earnings along with its rates will remain confidential until it is released in your earnings.

It is clearly stated that once you have a minimum of 20 unique visitors, you will be able to enjoy CPM or CPA ads, which pays a better rate. Now, the problem is, I have more than 20 unique visitors per day, and yet my ads are still in CPC format. So how does that happen?

I would like to share with you some of the FREE! software for mac that I have found. I mean, we have already spent shitload of our life savings to buy a iMac/Macbook and why should we spend more just to use these daily essential software? It’s not fair to consumer like us, and I definitely opposing on using pirated software as you have no idea if those software are safe to use or not.

Without further ado, please take a look at the list and I hope you will find these software useful.

Chat
- Colloquy is a really cool IRC application. I tested it and managed to load it for more than 1 day, no crashes at all. Best of all, it is FREE! I mean, IRC Networks offer free connection, so why should we pay for sub-par software? This application got the “Bubble look” [snapshot here. Just remember to select "Fiat" as the theme and you will have Bubble Chat ] and they even have an IRC program for your beloved iPhone!
- For MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, Jabar, QQ and all that chatting crap needs, you should download Adium. It is miles better than aMSN and galaxies away MSN Messenger for Mac. The damned MSN Messenger for Mac crashed on me every few minutes, go figure. And Adium offers Bubble Chat [picture here]

Office
- Neo Office - I tried it, and it is pretty slick, fast, and compatible with all the Microsoft document format such as .DOC, .XLS, .PPT, and etc. But the best thing is it is FREE! Now eat that, Microsoft Office and Apple iWork!
- Bean is another free office software for Mac. Unfortunately, I found Bean is not as feature-rich Neo Office.

Virtual Desktop - Virtual Desktop - For those of you who has yet to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, you can download this Virtual Desktop for the substitute for Leopard’s Space.

Image Editor - Not wanting to fork out thousands of dollars to buy Adobe Photoshop? Then head over to Gimp for mac. Gimp is actually started for Linux, then they ported it to Microsoft Windows. Now they even have one for us mac users! Yay!

FTP - Cyber Duck (don’t ask me why they call it a duck, not chicken) is so far the best FTP clients that I have used. Very stable, polished, and a lot of nice features for you to explore.

HTML - Okay, beside the obvious fact that you can use those document editors to save your work as HTML file. But for a dedicated and feature rich HTML editor, look no further than Smultron.

File Sharing - Always envy those Microsucks Microsoft having the Bittorrent clients? Well, envy no more. There is a very nice bittorrent client call Transmission available for us mac users.