Cow's Milk As Cat Laxative?

The hairball control medication did work for awhile initially for my 8 year old cat.

A fews weeks later though, its effectiveness seems to have waned to the extent that my cat was going minimal on water and zero on food intake for about a week. All the signs for cat constipation (lethargy, irritable when touched, always in the crouching position, straining to defecate with nothing produce) were there, except for vomiting. I was obviously very concern. Very, very concern seeing that my cat was losing a lot of weight too.

So, as a last resort, I took the very unconventional approach, hoping to relieve my cat's agony: I gave my cat some cow's milk. Just half a tablespoon though, at about 3 cc. I was quite sure that things will turn terminal if I were to do nothing. I was desperate. It's a chance that I have to take, even though I knew beforehand that some cats may suffer from complications with lactose intolerance because of milk.

NTFS Corruption No More

Those pesky NTFS corruption that I've had regularly since 2013, they have gone they way of the Dodo now. Thank goodness. And all I've did was to upgrade from a HDD to an SSD back in August 2020. Looks like it was a hardware problem all along, and I have been wrongly blaming things on software by mistake. Symptoms of a dying hard disk. Wish I knew that earlier. Lesson learnt.

It's scary now looking back at things during these last 7 years. My hard disk could have failed at any time during those years and I could have lost everything since I do not do regular backups then.

Now of late, I have been actively monitoring the health of my SSD regularly via a freeware called CrystalDiskInfo. Any sign of trouble and off I go and do another migration to a new.

Blue Eyed Snake

One regular visitor to my backyard this Golden Tree Snake. I have taken numerous pictures of this snake species before in the past. But never have I taken one with a blue covering over its eyes.

Bought Another Camera, The Olympus Pen EPL-9

I already own two cameras: a Canon EOS 800D/T7i and a Canon Powershot SX530HS. And it all started with me searching for a Canon telephoto lens a few months ago. It ended though with something quite unexpected. I did get my telephoto lens (a 40-150mm) and, believe it or not, I actually bought myself another camera - an entry level mirrorless camera from Olympus, the PEN EPL-9. Hey! This decision made financial sense, to me at least - see below.

It actually took me some 2 months to finally own this camera. I did face some hurdles along the way. It first caught my eye (which was bundled with a 40-150mm lens) quite unexpectedly towards the end of June 2020. I did my maths and realised that the listed selling price was a great bargain. Clever me thought that since the Lazada 7.7 sale was coming up on July 7 2020, why not wait and enjoy an even greater discount.

Big mistake. On that very fateful day, the price for the camera was revised upwards by some RM500, The bargain was no more. I was obviously disappointed. The 7.7 sale did give a RM20 discount coupon though. But trading in RM500 to receive a RM20 coupon? Who would do that?

I persevered.

From Hard Disk To SSD

Maybe this is something that I should have done a few months back. But then again, Solid State Drive (SSD) were very expensive then. My WinXP partition now boots up super fast in under 10 seconds after my upgrade to a SSD. Previously, it took about 2 minutes. It has been almost a month since I upgraded my PC internal hard disk drive (HDD) to a SSD. So far everything looks good. I would have loved getting a Samsung SSD with its reputation and reliability and all. But Samsung SSDs were way beyond my budget. In the end I settled for a Crucial 500GB MX500 2.5" drive by Micron. Not too bad at a price of RM293.

I wouldn't have migrated to an SSD if not for the ever increasing bad blocks at various partitions within my HDD over the last couple of months. One file even become inaccessible just a few weeks ago because of bad blocks. The HDD is still spinning and booting up alright but experience told me that the HDD is reaching its end of life.

Counterfeit Kingston DataTraveller 100 Flashdrive

Man, I almost got fooled. I have bought so many pendrives online before (all genuine until now) that I didn't think I would fall for one. A scam, a fake, a counterfeit.

I didn't suspect anything when I first received this 'Kingston' pendrive. As a matter of fact, I gave this seller a 5 Star rating and quite a good review for this purchase.

But one evening, Windows bombed out while I was copying a large number of files, totalling about 2 GB in size. This pendrive was still detectable but the files and folders were not viewable in Windows Explorer. I panicked. What has gone wrong? And what's this with Windows Device Manager detecting this pendrive as 'SMI USB DISK USB Device' and not as 'Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 USB Device'?

Good For Only 14 Months

Guess what. My refurbished Lenovo PC has died. It died a week ago. Problems with the power supply unit (PSU), I think.

But all is not lost. I could always salvage the parts as spares. The hard disk drive, for example. And beside, the total cost of ownership is now zero, based on my calculation. So I don't actually lose much.

No More WD External USB HDD From Now On

This is really disappointing. My hardly used Western Digital Elements 500MB external USB hard drive is showing signs of failing. It can still be detected by Windows XP and Ubuntu but this takes ages, something like 5 minutes or more. It was working fine when I had in plugged into Ubuntu, but Ubuntu, after stuttering for some 5 to 10 minutes, suddenly says that it will take 4 hours to copy 3 GB of files onto the drive. And the sluggishness began from then on.

Aomei Backupper To The Rescue Again

I don't believe it. My boot partition on my WinXP computer got corrupted again yesterday morning. Upon startup, Windows did a chkdsk (because it says the C: partition is corrupted), deleted some index entries and it failed to successfully boot after that. The last time this similar thing happened was just some 3 months ago. Why?

But luckily Aomei Backupper came to my rescue ... again.

My Contribution To The 2020 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

The annual MY Garden Birdwatch Survey was held this year on the 6th and 7th June, 2020. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, the bird count must go on. I don't have much of a problem with this myself as I always do my count at home. And besides, in early June 2020, the Malaysian government has already relax the lock-down rules somewhat, although social distancing must still be adhered to.

I conducted my count this year at 8:00 A.M on 6th June 2020. I only did one count as time was not at a premium lately.

Used Refurbished Lenovo PC, One Year Later

A little over a year ago today, this was toggling in my head: should I purchase a brand new personal computer, or should I get a used unit. A brand new PC isn't exactly cheap, while a used refurbished unit may have reliability issues. A tough choice, a tough decision that I had to make.

I took a gamble in the end. A used refurbished unit it was. It had been a nail biting moment since then.

Shopee Woes .. No Invoice No Receipt

I just bought myself a tablet from Shopee - a Samsung Galaxy Tab A (T-295). I could have bought it from Lazada, but the price on Shopee was more competitive. So, Shopee it was. Shipping was fast, and I duly received my order within 2 days.

Now to register my purchase with Samsung Malaysia. A simple task I thought, but wait, no tax invoice or receipt was issued to me. I double checked in the package. Zilch,. nothing.

So I messaged the seller, requesting for one. I waited. And waited. No reply.

Giving e-shopping A Miss For Now

"Stay Home, Buy online, We Will Deliver to your home"

says the online banner, or something like. Sounds good to me since we are having a Covid-19 lockdown in my country. All the local shops for none essential items are closed, by the way. This includes pet shops and computer stores.

So off I went on 27th March 2020, ordering some pet food for my cat as we are down to the last packet. And after 10 days, I have yet to receive my order. The delivery status hasn't changed since day one - No Delivery Logistics Information. I did contact the seller and they say that they are affected by the lockdown. I wish they would explain more.

Restoring Aomei Backup On WinXP

I first took a backup of my Windows XP system drive (C: in this case) with Aomei Backupper Standard (the free version) last May 2019. I had never done a restore-from-backup with Aomei before as I do not have a spare hard disk drive. Restoring to my healthy WinXP partition is an option but it seems a bit too risky for me. As a consequence, this thought had been bugging me since: Will my restore from Aomei backup work?

Fast forward to 2nd March 2020. My Windows XP kept rebooting that fine morning. The login screen never appeared. I tried mounting the C: drive from Ubuntu. It failed with an error - the NTFS file system on my C: drive was totally screwed. Only one thing to do now - a full system restore from my Aomei backup.

Going Off The Air

The local Malaysian TV broadcast went totally digital some 4 months ago. So, what have I done? Did I buy a new digital TV or a digital decoder for my Panasonic flat screen analog TV?

Believe it or not, I did absolutely nothing. Why? Because there is absolutely nothing for me to watch on any of the local Malaysian TV channels. In my opinion, they have gone from bad to worse over the last couple of years.

My First Download Of The Edge Financial Daily

I was a regular at The Edge Markets (previously The Edge Daily) some 15 years ago. So much so that when I was forced to register as a user at that time, an offer was made to me for downloading e-copies of their daily newspaper, The Edge Financial Daily. I don't have the bandwidth then as I was on dial-up and so, I did anything. I just toss the link into the bin. Besides, all the financial information that I needed was readily available in the local Malaysian daily English newspapers then, The Star in my case.

Fast forward to February 1st, 2020. On this very day, The Star decided to do away with the closing stock prices of Bursa Malaysia, the foreign exchange rates and closing commodity prices. Gone too are the dividend payout rates and dates, and the bonus/rights issue announcements that were regularly published every Monday. All that they have now are just news articles in the business section, no numbers.

Oriental Honey Buzzard Video At 1080p

It was not too long ago that I lamented about having to downsize my Oriental Honey Buzzard video from 1080p to 720p during post-processing. As luck would have it, the bird returned to my neighbourhood again about 3 weeks ago. With the help of my tripod, I managed to capture the bird again on video at 1080p resolution with my Canon Powershot SX530 HS camera. I am not sure if it was the same bird again though.

Steps For Saving H.264 MP4 Videos In VirtualDub2

How I wish that saving my edited video files in VirtualDub2 is as simple as clicking on a single button or option like in Avidemux. Unfortunately, there isn't one.

It took me quite awhile to figure out the parameters and the steps to save my video files in the H.264 format in the MP4 container in VirtualDub2. I use the parameters in the video files that were produced by my cameras as a guide. My uploaded VirtualDub2 post-process videos were accepted by Dreamstime, no rejections based on technicalities. So I assume that what I have done must be correct.

Yes - after a lull of 2 years, I have rekindled my love affair with VirtualDub, albeit with one of its younger siblings VirtualDub2. Not bad considering that I only have a 2GB RAM, Pentium Dual Core 2.7 GHz computer and I could get my video processing done in a reasonable amount of time.

Faulty 1GB Kingston RAM

Trouble-shooting a computer problem is never easy. Worse if these are passive devices that emit no sound or visible faults, unlike their mechanical counterpart.

My 1 GB Kingston RAM module for example. I replaced it with another 2 GB Kingston module and the random computer crashes that I had just went away. Pinpointing the source of this problem though was more that a half-year journey of pain. It got to a point where I could not get anything done as the computer crashed as soon as it booted up.