Auto repair by repairpal

Monday, March 7, 2011

Will you buy a new car? this might seem to be a very good question in our economy today. A lot of people for some reason need to buy a new vehicle but doesn't seem to have the budget to do so. My answer, why not repair your old one to save money, or at least until the money comes back in. The next big question is which one to choose, my answer is a website that does just that, informing you where to repair your precious vehicles its repailpal.com. 

I had a friend in Dallas area and just went to Dallas auto repair http://repairpal.com/dallas-auto-repair . The link doesn't just let you know where the best repair shops in Dallas are, but also give you a small background of the area and what common problems you might encounter because of the environment. Their pages also gives you a small map to look at and other useful links and information for your vehicle and the vehicle savvy.

For those looking for a vehicle to use here is one you may look at its the Chevrolet Silverado  http://repairpal.com/chevrolet-silverado_1500-2005. Since they deal with vehicles, its just normal to see some in this website, and the good news is that it also features reviews by some of the owners, helping you decide or if you just want to know what other people think of the vehicle.I do know some of you like to tinker in your own vehicle, for example brakes, you can check brake job http://repairpal.com/brake-rotor-replacement which will give you information about breaks, best practices or you can check other links which will give you a ton of information.  this truly is a one stop shop for vehicle repair.

Skyline: A movie that could have been a blockbuster

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

During the last few days, movie goers seem to flock to only one line and that would be Harry Potter 7 part 1, and that almost no other movie was available nor seemed interesting to watch except for one, Skyline. We have seen the trailer before as well as the posters and the movie seemed to offer an alternative, or so we thought.

The movie is just all about the title itself, a group of people who's last few hours of their lives revolved at the top of the tower, evading an alien invasion. Aliens seem to hypnotize human being and suck them to their ships or sometimes not for the purpose of getting their brains to make more aliens. The graphics seemed good enough and the actors seem to know what to do with themselves but the story not that good. Not much action was seen only, people avoiding capture. 

And it seems that the best part was barely shown on the last part where the lead actors brain was somehow still in control when it was transferred to an alien body and tries to protect his girlfriend and started attacking enemy aliens. I guess that should have been the part where they should have concentrated, but then the title would not have been skyline. Its just a shame to see that this could have been a good movie, something like of War of the Worlds mixed with Ben Ten.

Blue Sky Scrubs

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Image from www.blueskyscrubs.com/ 

Healthcare has always been a sensitive issue, and in recent times we have seen a drastic rise in the demand for healthcare professionals. I am not a healthcare professional myself, but there was a time where I almost started to be one, not that I have any regrets but sometimes its nice to think what could have happened otherwise. During those times, I always wondered what was the uniforms being used by nurses and other healthcare professionals, they always have the same look but different designs, until I found out, they were called scrubs. 

Scrubs clothing is something that healthcare professionals , medical professionals or even patients wear inside a hospital or clinic, but they are most commonly associated with nurse uniforms. They come in a variety of colors and sizes but seem to follow a relatively same design in cut and feature, we can even call them nursing scrubs, since the majority of its users are nurses. They all seem to be comfortable and easy to wear and emphasize that the person wearing it is supposed to be sterile and clean. I even saw a veterinarian wear the same type of clothing.

But for all those who are wondering, where to buy cheap scrubs? I say the availability of scrub clothing is very high not only in department stores but on the world wide web as well. I even found a website which would allow you to choose not only cheap scrubs but with good design and quality as well. You can go to http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/ or click on the link to see more information. The website is very useful specially to those in the medical field or to anyone who wants to be fashionable whenever a time would come to visit or to stay a while in the hospital for a day or two. www.blueskyscrubs.com/

Gamer: A movie that could almost be a reality

Monday, November 15, 2010

Every now so often, we would come across a movie that would make us think. Just recently, I was able to view such a film, at first I thought it was another action film from the guy who made Sparta look cool from the movie 300, but then the film was in fact for me a possible reality.

The movie is about in a time on a not so distant future when social networking has taken an advanced step into human life, and that nano-technology as evolved into something that can not only be controlled but can reproduce as well. Gerard Butler plays as Kable a framed convicted criminal who is part of an online reality game of kill or be killed "Slayers", as a character he is being controlled by a kid named Simon played by Logan Lerman. Kable then works his way to freedom from being controlled including his wife who is also part of an online reality game "Society", and his child.

Certainly, the technology imagined in the movie has its roots in todays world. The virtual reality used by Simon could be the future of Telepresence, possibly a room filled with sensors, walls of HD screen, a very high speed connection via fiber and probably a multiple times faster than the current I7 processor of Intel. Even the nano technology is not that far from imagination, even today experts are working on nano technology to help save lives and improve performance on how we work, maybe not as small as a single human cell but certainly did we think we could pack billions of transistors the size of our thumb 20 years back which makes up todays processors?

With regards to signal transmission, that could be something that needs a lot more work, since there are a lot more things to consider specially the environment and signal strength to ensure seamless connection, specially if your playing online games, but even that is not fictional. Either we fill the entire city with access points (which some cities are now working on) or improve our RFID technology.

But probably what is scary is that it is a great possibility that every single one of us could be fitted with an IP address. A unique set of binary or hexadecimal digits that would allow us to be reached much like a mobile phone but with much more direct access. We value our privacy and that is reflected on the way we protect our personal information specially on the internet where everything could be accessed with the right hardware and software. With social networking being one of the biggest income generating sub-industry in the field of IT, people will certainly invest on how to entertain and get their attention as well.

Circle Island Resort

Monday, September 27, 2010

A good place to spend the day does not have to be far from the city. Our team had our very first GA from a resort just a few minutes away from where we work and the place was called Circle Island Resort in Cavite.

The resort had a slide and a number of pools to choose from and with varying depths to swim at.

Although I'm not so sure about the theme of the place, probably native american due to design of the pools, a tunnel and plenty of rocks and plants that surround the pools. 

They also have different cottages, a restaurant, videoke facilities and grills for those who prefer to cook their own meal.

In all, it was a very nice place with reasonable rates Php90 to Php200 for the entrance fee, Php500 to Php3,000 for the cottages with hotel amenities as well. In my opinion it was a very nice place and budget friendly.

Mobot

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Going back on my college days during the time when we were still working on the initial stages of our design project, we had to practice with something common, or rather do something which already was existing. Our group then decided on making a robot. Nothing like the Star Wars Interactive R2D2 Astromech Droid Robot found on stores but something a bit more complicated, thus we worked on what we call "Mobot".

Its basically a device or a toy that would follow a path and avoid collisions. I forgot the model of the processor that we used but it was I believe a very primitive type of processor.

We used an IDE and if I remembered correctly a serial cable to connect to the computer for us to program the robot. We also used 3 infra red sensor at the front, together with two independent dynamo to act as the engine and an old Motorola battery pack for power.

Transformers at SM Makati

A couple of months back, when me and my girlfriend were off buying a new DVD player, I just could not help but notice a familiar image Transformers Leader Optimus Prime on the cat walk together with other characters of the movie Transformers. Even though, the even was probably for kids, I did saw a lot of adults posing with the mascots, I myself included.

It was just reliving the times when I used to watch the cartoon version of Transformers.

The guys inside these mascots would have been sweating but then again they still looked cool even though I'm not so sure if these were real characters from the movie.

Taco's for breakfast

Monday, August 23, 2010

Here is another breakfast blog, sometimes it nice to have breakfast that's a bit out of the ordinary, at least for our dining table. My mother tried serving taco's, but because beef is a lot more expensive, she improvised in using tuna. Tuna right out the can then cooked with onions served as the protein part of the meal.

With the other ingredients as lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, cheese and a bit of sweet chili sauce. I thought at first it was not a heavy meal, but after two or three of these I felt I was wrong.

http://www.makemychoice.com/

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Do you need to make a new decision? or simply want to see how other people answer your questions. I just stumbled upon an amazing website, its called makemychoice.com, the website allows you to make easy and free feedbacks on choices for your questions. You can also make feedback to the choices of other people making this site a very social way of providing you feedback in some of the decisions that you need to make.

The results for the choices are shown immediately together with the comments, and if your profile has picture, it will show them as well. I think there is a lot of potential in this website to be one of the next great social websites since, users are allowed to make feedback to other users as well as send messages and create your own profile. It might also be possible to link makemychoice.com in the future to other social websites, which would allow the website to reach to a wider audience, as well as to allow other people experience what makemychoice.com has to offer.

We will always have questions that needs to be answered and,  makemychoice.com is a great venue if you have something you just cant get off your head and at same time, get feedback from people, who may provide a good reason for a certain option. The best thing about the website is that, feedbacks are no longer bound by text alone, now you can send a feedback in a form of mp3, pictures and even documents.

Sorcerer's Apprentice Movie

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Just recently I had the chance to watch a movie a couple of weekends back, and find this film interesting. It tells of a story of a sorcerer named Baltazar (Nicolas Cage) who is searching for the prime merlinian, someone who is destined to be the next Merlin and the only sorcerer who can defeat Morgana, this happens to be Dave (Jay Baruchel). During the course of their acquaintance Dave releases Horvath (Alfred Molina) Baltazar's arch enemy. As time goes by, more and more enemies brakes loose and Dave being the next great sorcerer is trained by Baltazar, until Dave finaly meets and defeats Morgana.

The story wasn't that great, or maybe its just meant for younger audience but in my opinion the only part that made this movie great is because it had Nicolas Cage and that it had a cool sound track "Secret by OneRepublic". The movie would have been better had they added more twist or depth, they did however, add room for a sequel, which would need to be a lot better than the first. The story would also be good if it was made for a TV series first, then add a finale as a movie.

One great breakfast

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A good breakfast is probably the most important meal in your day, to make this meal special I decided to make something I just craved. A good rice meal with omelet and sauté'd vegetables. A lot of butter and hot sauce really made a good breakfast and ended up with a great day.

Secure locks

A time came when I had to keep my things inside a locker but for obvious reasons I had to buy my own locks. I have heard scores of instances where locks were opened and valuables taken. That is why I looked for something that seemed secure enough, I ended up with this certain type of lock.

At first glance, it just looks like any ordinary lock until you take a close look at the keys.

I know it looks like a phillips screwdriver but its really the key hole.

Home made pizza of Guiller

Sunday, July 4, 2010

I have made home made pizza's before (you can click here to view my post) and I guess I'm not the only one in our family who loves to make pizza's at home. My younger brother has recently made a very nice pizza on his own, while I use bread, he instead used real dough.

A very simple pizza, but very delicious.

Samsung GT-E2120

With all the expenses around us, would it be nice to have a phone that not just only does the job that we require but also gives that extra mile without the extra cost. Such is what I have found in the Samsung E-2120.

One of the not so latest but not so old Samsung Mobile phone model which I got my hands on. Some of the features of this very nice phone includes:

• Textured cover
• 1.52 inch screen with 65K colours
• FM radio with internal antenna
• VGA camera
• External Memory (upto 2GB)
• MP3 player
• 520 hours standby time and 10hours talk time (According to their website )

As you can see there really isn't much with this phone, but with the price tag of around Php2,000 or  a little less than $50 its a pretty good deal, considering also that its Samsung. Here you can see the back side, of the phone, its all I'll be showing since there really isn't much to look at except the nice texture of the cover.

You'll notice that just like some of Nokia's boxes, Samsung has also made clear that there is no point putting a small phone in a large box specially if your putting only a few pieces of paper, headset and charger inside.

What's great about this phone is that, its not only cheap but functional as well. I placed a 2GB MicroSD card and it worked without slowing. The call quality was excellent and the talk and standby time seems to live to what Samsung has indicated in its website. The music on loud speakers is acceptable, loud enough to be heard with decent quality, but adding the headset changes that to a very superb quality. There is no equalizers but I really didn't need it since the quality was really good for the price. Camera quality is mediocre, but acceptable with the video playback to be a bit awkward since it plays in a very small space. My only wish is for the phone to be able to play music while I read or write text messages.

In all, Its a great phone, specially if your just looking for a budget friendly phone that just enables you to call and text while at the same time provides great quality and yes, play great music.

Greenwich American Idol Pizza

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The  Greenwich American Idol Pizza is one of the newest product from one of the best known pizza chain in the Philippines. According to Greenwich the pizza has seven favorite American toppings, hence the name, also, they dubbed it American Idol pizza due to their promo for American Idol, though I am not sure if this type of pizza is actually part of that promo or just their overload pizza's. By the way, I would like to apologize for the picture, it seems i ate a lot before I decided to take a shot.

I am also unsure what the seven toppings really are, probably based on what I saw and tasted were, onions, bell pepper, shoestring potatoes, and a couple more. The verdict, its really good, its something close to Yellow Cab's New Yorks Finest, except for the shoe strings which I find annoying when eating.

Nokia 5130 Xpress Music

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Nokia 5130 Xpress Music or the 5130 XM is another classic bar shape phone from Nokia's Xpress Music Line and comes in three colors, blue, silver and red. Just like any music phone from Nokia, it specializes in excellent music but that is not all  this gadget has to offer. Its basic specifications include:

• Bright screen up to  256K colors
• Numeric Keypad
• Dedicated music keys
• Voice Command
• USB connectivity
• 3.5 mm audio jack output
• micro SD card slot
• Bluetooth
• GPRS and EDGE
• Approxiamtely 6 hours of talk time
• Approximately 288 hours of stand-by time
• Supports IMAP, POP, SMTP, OMA EMN
• Supporteds HTML, XHTML for web browsing
• 2 megapixel camera
• Video recording
• Symbian series 40 Operating System

 

First thing I noticed is the very small box, unlike previous Nokia phones whose boxes were at least twice the width of their phone's unlike the box of Nokia 5130 XM.

The reason for such a small box may probably be due to two reasons: one is that it only contains the basics, these include the phone, battery, 1GB micro SD memory card, charger, headset and the smallest USB connector from Nokia I have ever seen, the second reason is just my theory of Nokia's effort to save resources and to cut prices.

Nokia made good with the cellphone's casing, because its very convenient to hold, I would however, comment on the numeric keypad because the 2 keypad is very close to the D-pad, it might be better to add a bit of space between. Found on the left side of the phone are the dedicated music keys, its also the Radio keys for Radio listing.

On the right side of the phone is where the volume controls are located as well as the micro SD slot. On top are conveniently placed 3.5 mm jack output, power slot and the micro USB port.

At the back you'll notice the design on the lower portion which is where the speakers are located. Also, there is the 2.0 Camera with out flash.

In all the Nokia 5130XM is a great phone, and considering its retail price of about Php6,000 or rougly US $135. I think the phone is between mid-range to low-range device, considering its price tag and the features that it provides. The feel and touch is great and the audio is very nice, specially when you use the 3.5 mm audio jack output and connect it to your home sound system. The down side for this phone is probably its camera, even though it has 2.0 Mega Pixels, the pictures are mediocre, probably due to the lack of flash. Also, I'm not a great fan of the series 40 of symbian,  it would have been great to use a series 60 instead, avoiding the short-cut keys of attachments to your text editor. All in all, the phone is great for its price tag, and does best what it's meant for, having great music.

KVM Switch

A Keyboard, Video and Mouse (KVM) Switch or KVM switch is a device that is used to control multiple system units using only one Monitor, one keyboard and one switch. Just as what I have here, I used a two port KVM switch to control two system units. KVM switches are useful because they are sometimes cheaper than monitors and can save a lot of space. This device is also ideal for people who manage multiple computers control them on a single seat. KVM switches vary, some allow buttons to switch from one computer or server to another, while some allows shortcut keys to keep the administrator from going to and fro the KVM switch.

How to connect a bluetooth headset to a Nokia 5800

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Everyday whenever I travel its almost impossible not to see people listing to their music, either through their cellphones, MP3 players or even the background music from buses, and I guess I'm one of them. But sometimes having all that wire from your earphones is pretty annoying, that is why it's convenient to use a bluetooth headset to skip all that wire and enjoy your music wire free.

It took me a while to learn how to connect a bluetooth headset to a Nokia 5800 and here is what I did.

1. On your phone Tap Settings > Connectivity > Bluetooth
2. Turn your bluetooth "on"
3. Above the menu, tap the right arrow or the connectivity sign in between the two bluetooth logo, to view your paired devices
4. Tap "Option and select "New Paired Device".
5. Make sure your bluetooth headset is switched on and is ready to be paired or in pairing mode, Tap "More Devices"
6. Select the device as it appears on the list, if you do not see your device, just try tapping "More Devices" again
7. If the device request's for a code, enter the code provided by the manufacturer of the bluetooth headset
8. Select if you wish to connect the device automatically in the future
9. Select connect when asked, and your bluetooth headset should be connected

Riverview Resort

Saturday, April 3, 2010

As a small treat to my siblings and to have a temporary relief from the heat, I  decided that we should go to nearby resort. It's called Riverview Resort and Conference Center and it is just a few minutes away from our house. We have been here before and you would not call it a dream vacation getaway, but it does the job of providing enjoyment to the kids and for some adults as well.

The entrance to the place seems renovated probably to attract more customers, a fresh look is always welcome.

As you enter, the first thing you notice is a large pool and  a covered area at the center, this area might prove useful for those who prefer to swim in the shade. Notice there is a rather small  blue slide, which spurs water on a scheduled basis (meaning you can only use it when water comes out).

Holding the roof are four pillars, and a pair holds an elevated area. I really do not know its purpose, probably just a venue to jump around the water.

Since the large pool is for adults, the place also provides a kids pool at the back with two feet of water, has a smaller slide and a large mushroom that spurs water. There is also a play ground for kids who want to stay dry while their parents splash each other out.

Cottages are spacious and the resort also has a store to buy goods and stuff. There is also a place where you can grill foods for lunch or you can also buy from the resort as well.

There are also room for those who wish to swim at night, with an array of rooms that provide CR, TV, bed, etc.

Riverview Resort is a very nice budget friendly, easy to reach place if you want to suddenly splash water with your family and friends. Cottages cost at least Php300  to Php500 and up, depending on what you want and entrance fee is a mere 75 pesos per head. Getting to the place is easy as most buses  going to Calamba City  from Metro Manila pass through the resort. Being budget friendly does have its consequences: the place tends to be filled up during peak season, and sometimes it just gets too crowded, food  and other items are very expensive inside. The place is best for budget night swimming, and its also better to have reservations.

Speaker quick fix

Friday, April 2, 2010

Going green and saving planet Earth has suddenly become a priority for a lot of people, and the hysteria is slowly creeping into the minds of almost every person, sometimes unintentionally they become environmentalist. That was not the case when I decided to have a new set of speakers for my rather old PC. It took me four old computer speakers and create a personalized home sound system for myself.

I would not call this one as a modern work of art, but the fact is it works, and it works just fine. I took old parts from one speaker and soldered them to another. I made a few wire jumpers here and there, and a few electrical tapes did the job. Not only did I recycle, I also saved a couple of bucks in the process.