Google+ On Opera Mini

I am now accessing Google+ on Opera Mini via the URL http://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream. This is the only URL that I know of that will give me a decent looking Google+ Stream on Opera Mini. I have tested it on a mobile phone and also on a J2ME (Java Micro Edition) emulator running under Windows XP (I am using MicroEmulator). They display perfectly, much to my satisfaction.

When accessing Google+ via the "Speed Dial" that came pre-configured with Opera Mini Version 5 and 7, most of the Google+ options will go missing. They were there previously but for some reason they have gradually disappeared over the last couple of weeks, making the Google+ page looking rather plain and uninteresting. I wonder what happened?

Turmeric Flowers

Before I started planting them, I did not know that turmeric produces flowers.

I have been fortunate enough to have some flowering turmeric during the last couple of weeks. It is not often that I get a bloom. Sometimes, I do not get any even though the plant has matured and the root is due to be dug up. One has to be patient sometimes I suppose.

Dwindling Number Of Garden Snails

Back in February and March 2013, there were a few blog postings at Ipoh Happenings talking about some extreme levels of solar UV radiation that was bombarding Ipoh back then. The weather in Ipoh has definitely been quite extreme in recent months. I can feel in it my skin while doing my gardening. The day time temperature can be quite unbearable at times. And this can drag on for a number of days, sometimes without any rain to cool us off.

I do wonder though if this excessive UV radiation and extreme heat is taking a toll on the snails in my garden. There seems to be a significant drop in their numbers, although nothing much has changed in my environment. There is still enough shady places for them to hide. I first noticed this back in January 2013. At that time, I could not find any live snail but just some empty snail shells under some shrubs and overgrown weeds. I had a peek at my garden again yesterday, and all I could find was just a single snail, measuring about 2 inches in length. Still a lot of empty snail shells, although the colour of these shells do appear to be fading.

Spicing Up My Garden With Ginger

Mixed Yield

Over the years, my success with growing ginger have been mixed. At times the yield was good. At times, all I got were just skinny ginger roots. And at other times, there was nothing at all - the ginger that I planted just rotted away instead of sprouting.

I have had my suspicion with the pot placement. I grow them in pots instead of the ground, by the way. Pots placed under shadier area seems to produce healthier looking plants with bigger and better ginger roots. For pots placed under direct sunlight, young shoots will just turn yellow and eventually dry up. Or will have leaf stalks that are just about 12 inches in length (when it should be about 2 to 2½ feet) with skinny ginger roots.

Some Restriction With FlashGet At Oracle

I tried downloading the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from the Oracle website using FlashGet but failed. It seems that Oracle has placed some restriction in using a download manager utility software (FlashGet in my case) in performing downloads. I wonder why? I never had this problem 5 or 6 years ago when Java was still owned by Sun Microsystems - albeit I have to use Sun's own download manager. If not for a dial-up line, I do not need to use FlashGet.

In the end, I downloaded the JRE from http://oldapps.com/ - with FlashGet. Fearing for Trojans, Virus or Malware, I scanned the download file with Avira and it appears to be clean. To be safe, I double checked the site http://oldapps.com/ with McAfee SiteAdvisor and it reports that the site is safe.

Scribefire Can Only Retrieve The Last 25 Posts

It seems that there is a limit to the number of posts that ScribeFire (an offline blog editor) can retrieve from my blog. All that I can see is just the last 25 posts when ScribeFire connects to my blog. For the moment, I will have to use the online blog editor at Blogger for any updates to my older blog posting that ScribeFire does not retrieve. This defeats my purpose of using an offline blog editor in the first place. I have been happily using ScribeFire for about 8 months, but now I am disappointed.

It is a pity really. Although it is no longer supported, I find ScribeFire Classic version 4.0.0.1 for Firefox to be quite a decent offline blog editor - and to be the best among all versions of ScribeFire. I am using ScribeFire on Firefox version 3.6.8.

One Snake Too Many

Help! A Python

I do wonder why has there been an increase in the number of snake encounters around my house in recent months. Between 1998 and 2011, we have had only 3. But during the last 12 months, my wife and I have had 5. The latest being on the morning of 3rd March 2013 when I found a python in one of my Ayam Cantik's (a bantam breed of chicken) chicken coop. 3 out of 5 chickens were killed - 1 missing, presumably eaten, 1 being coiled and another lying motionless. I had to call the Fire Department (the default snake catchers in Malaysia) to help me remove the python. It is about 6 feet in length.

Accessing Facebook Via Facebook Mobile Site From My PC

With a dial-up line and a 14 year old Windows 98 PC, accessing Facebook via the URL http://www.facebook.com/ is a pain for me. Compared with Firefox version 3.6.8, the Opera web browser provided some improvement in terms of speed in rendering the Facebook pages. But on the whole, things are still crawling. Disabling the loading of graphic images does not help much. It has more to do with the heavy usage of Javascripts, I believe.

It is a welcome relief when I started accessing Facebook via the Facebook Mobile Site http://m.facebook.com/ on my desktop PC. My experience on Facebook has certainly improved. I have been using this URL instead of http://www.facebook.com for about a week now. With less graphics and Javascripts, the responsiveness of Opera is certainly much better, even when I have 3 other tabs opened simultaneously in Opera - and this is on a Windows 98 PC with 128 MB RAM and AMD 333MHz processor. Also, I do noticed that hard disk activity is significantly less compared to previously.

The user interface design of the Facebook Mobile Site is definitely plain, with not much bells and whistles. But I believe all the functions on Facebook that one normallly use are still there. I think I will be adding more Facebook Pages to my news feeds in the days to come. I could not do much previously as Opera was crawling all the time when loading Facebook.

Converting YouTube's .FLV files to .MKV format

This is what I did to convert YouTube's .FLV files to the .MKV format with Avidemux. Video and audio in the .FLV files are encoded in the H264 and AAC codec, respectively.

FM Radio Stations In Ipoh

Here is a list of FM radio stations that I can tune in to in Ipoh. There is a total of 21 radio stations in all. I do not think I have missed any out. I wish I could tune in to more FM radio stations like what they have in the Klang Valley, especially the news and talk radio stations (e.g. BFM - The Business Station).