then i will catch up on Australia's next top model season 8 ep 1 to 6 :)
Amaysim looks pretty good in relation to the AS You Go plan $5 for sim and low rates (it also proclaims it won some money magazine awards for offering value for money)
http://www.amaysim.com.au/mobile-plans/amaysim-as-you-go.html
Vaya is a relatively new entrant.
http://www.vaya.net.au/?option=Mobile&4Gsimonly&plan=Skinny%20Plans
TPG.com.au - I have a few mobiles with TPG's old $1 plan back from its inception days but now there is no more $1 per month plan for new subscribers, now $17.99 is their only plan (for its ADSL2+ users) or $19.99 for public but has unlimited calls to TPG mobiles. Complaints are rising based on internet comments (but those could be from competitors lol)
http://www.kogan.com/au/mobile/ Appears to have unlimited mobile calls for as low as $39 but you have to read the fineprint.
Woolies mobile is crap:
http://www.woolworthsmobile.com.au/
Then there is optus and Telstra. Overpriced plans.
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American Ninja Warrior Season 5 :) Can't wait to watch it. Get it from tpb
(mp4 version encoding sux but mkv massive ones are great quality, guess beggars can't be choosers if you want to watch it first lol, the subsequent qualifying rounds are really tough lol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Ninja_Warrior
It shows you human evolution ie what was not possible a decade ago is now commonplace.
Decades ago, gymastics was what you had to do to learn flips and now you can teach yourself watching youtube vids on parkour and freerunning
Check out this front flip over a massive gap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb4B4iPSxec
I can't wait for Ninja Warrior to go to Europe because there is a tonne of talent in Europe.
Speaking of tv, season 20 of America's next top model is out :)
Also AXS.TV.Presents.The.Voice.vs.Steven.Seagal(720p) was great!
I also try hard to find apprentice Asia missing episodes. Ok watched them all. Tony Fernandes of Air Asia was hiring... This was a budget production and the so-called talent in asia was nothing compared to apprentice UK. I don't even know what the prize was apart from getting a job.
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I haven't been listening to much pop music, but I stumbled across some Kim Wilde compilations that I didn't even know existed which are pretty good. Snapshots released by Sony Music in 2011 is one that I liked where she does covers of a lot of classics. If you are a fan of hers, its worth getting.
My favorite album of hers is still "Close" released in 1988 and favorite song is 03 - Four Letter Word (but Never Trust a Stranger was the main hit in that album)
Whenever I feel nostalgic (or depressed), I just go find a bunch of my favorite past songs in flac or ape format :)
Flac is great and I use Jriver media center to play it http://www.jriver.com/download.html
U can get a patch by MPT. I like Jriver more than Foobar2000 (freeware) because the audio sounds better.
ps just in case you didn't know, Britney Spears has a greatest hits album out lol
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I rarely update my Garmin NUVI 2360 GPS (love them because of their lifetime map updates) but when I did, I found garmin express kept stalling at 95% so I emailed them. this is what they said:
Please try to uninstall and reinstall Garmin Express if this doesnt work please try to use Map Updater link:
For PC:
It worked perfectly :)
There is a new android camera which I installed on my padfone2, it takes a bit of getting used to but it is better than the original version imo. Try it for yourself, apparently works on all android fones without needing to root
http://www.androidauthority.com/stock-android-camera-apk-photo-sphere-236196/
One of my favorite picture viewing software is
http://www.acdsee.com/en/products/acdsee-pro-6
new version is out:
http://www.rlslog.net/acdsee-pro-6-3-build-221-x86x64-keymaker-p2p/
I installed a nice software called Dxo Optics pro 8...
Here is a nice review of lens
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Which-lenses-should-you-choose-for-your-Canon-EOS-5D-Mark-III/Standard-lenses
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Just in case u didn't know Pet Shop Boys - Electric (2013) is their latest album.
Whenever I listen to PSB, I think of New Order and then I go look for their old albums... I stumbled across this one: New Order – Technique (1989 [2009 UK Reissue]) [FLAC - 24.96]
Technique is my favorite album of theirs :)
Liked this article
http://petapixel.com/2013/07/12/confessions-of-an-ex-gear-addict-how-buying-cameras-and-lenses-made-me-miserable-and-lose-thousands/
At the moment I am playing Sid.Meiers.Civilization.V.Brave.New.World-RELOADED while I munch on my Cadbury's Marvellous Creations. I got addicted on these when I was in HK and ever since I got back, I have been buying slabs of it every week lol
I am thinking of getting a Samsung Galaxy S4 with my reward points to see what makes it so good lol. I have already got enough cameras so I guess another mobile phone just to keep up with technology.
Samsung GALAXY S4
GALAXY S4 has a sleek, sophisticated look with a slim body of only 7.9 mm thick. It is designed with a Full HD SUPER AMOLED Full Touch Screen Display of brilliant, stunning images on the device’s 5-inch screen. Driven by an ultra-powerful quad-core processor, its performance is beyond comparison.
Creating fun, innovative snapshots
GALAXY S4’s 13 mega-pixel rear camera offers unrivalled image quality, complete with an array of creative effects for your snapshots, thanks to its unique functions.
GROUP PLAY
Gather your friends and share your favorite music with them. The Group Play function allows eight GALAXY S4 smartphones to be connected wirelessly for sharing photos and documents and playing music together. Create a powerful sound system and keep the party going.
Dual Shot
Capture every special moment, with you, the photographer, in the picture as well. GALAXY S4’s Dual Shot takes pictures with both its front and rear cameras simultaneously, so that the images in front and behind can be captured together alongside a myriad of photography effects. From now, every smiling face will show up on the snapshots you take
Sound & Shot
Express your feelings through the photos you send and put in the sound effects too. GALAXY S4’s Sound & Shot lets you record up to nine seconds of audio with a still image. It adds another layer of excitement to help you relive and share every moment of each picture much more vividly.
Drama Shot
Can an ordinary still photo capture motion? Definitely, if taken with GALAXY S4’s Drama Shot, which identifies moving objects and gets a sequence of photos in a collage to tell an entire story, effortlessly, professionally and with a touch of drama.
Eraser Mode
When a busy, overcrowded backdrop threatens to mar the snapshot you take, let GALAXY S4 come to the rescue. With a swipe of the finger, you can delete unwanted objects or people for a picture-perfect photo.
Story Album
GALAXY S4’s Story Album feature lets you organize your photos based on specific events or travel experiences. Choose a theme and layout, then see the story you tell come alive on a smart, exquisite album. You can also print the photos and hold the memories in your hand forever.
Live the easy life
With so many nitty-gritty chores coming your way daily, GALAXY S4 is a personal assistant you can’t do without. Its full suite of smart technology helps you save time, raise productivity and focus on your goals.
AIR GESTURE
Motion your hand over the screen, without having to touch it, to control your GALAXY S4. Air View also allows you to accept calls, surf the web and browse photos. With just a finger hovering over the screen, you can now preview photos and emails and speed dial.
SMART PAUSE
GALAXY S4 understands your every tiny gesture. When you look away, whatever videos you are watching will pause and only resumes when your vision returns to the screen, making sure you do not miss out on any content.
Been reading up on photography :)
This little fstop chart is pretty useful
http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2012/03/17/free-f-stop-chart-master-your-aperture/
http://www.redbubble.com/people/peterh111/journal/5725038-the-easy-guide-to-understanding-aperture-f-stop
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/setting-the-right-fstop-for-your-digital-photo.html
http://www.online-convert.com/
Since the only things worth swapping for in my award points are cameras, I constantly have to look at camera reviews lol... I am interested to see what the 41mp Nokia 909 is like given the 808 is a dinosaur now
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/9219904986/shootout-samsunggalaxys4-vs-htcone-vs-iphone5-vs-lumia920
I love Lynda.com as it makes my life much easier with tonnes of photography and computer software tutorials :)
No matter how skilled you are, there is something to learn (sometimes worth fastforwarding over the boring parts lol)
These ones are the ones I found useful lately
Lynda.com - Excel 2007. Pivot Tables for Data Analysis
Lynda.com - Getting Pro Results from a Compact Camera
Lynda.com - Digital Photography Principles - The Camera
Lynda.com - Foundations of Photography - Exposure
Lynda.com.Microsoft.Excel.2007.Financial.Analysis
Lynda.com - Job Search Collection (4 courses)
Lynda - Shooting with the Canon 5D Mark III http://h33t.com/torrent/04977334 Its password protected lol I will see which rar password recovery tool works best for windows 8 as my next project...
http://igawar.blogspot.com/2012/10/rar-password-recovery-professional-51-crackkey.html is one I am trying out. Takes forever... so sometimes u need to settle for less
http://tutorialsdl.com/lynda-shooting-with-the-canon-5d-mark-iii/
Models and photography go hand in hand., are you ready to become America's next top model?
http://kickass.to/creativelive-modeling-101-with-yoanna-house-t6767201.html
The kickass site has got lots of useful tutorials eg creativelive-mark-wallace-speedlights-101
and
CreativeLive - Fundamentals of Digital Photography - John Greengo
I can't remember where I got this one but I found it useful
CreativeLive - Canon 5D Mark III Fast Start with John Greengo (2012)
Apart from Lynda.com, creativelive, theres also Kelby Training who have tonnes of photoshop and photography tutorials. It sure beats reading an ebook :)
The thing is if only they compressed it down instead of having these whopping big 6gb files, then it would be more productive and efficient. Anyway, Im poor so I shouldn't complain ha ha
Is It Time to Quit Your Job?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100593361If you like reading ebooks, this pack has tonnes (use utorrent to dl)
http://www.worldoffiles.net/link-f-n/nonfiction-ebook-pack-january-2012-phc
world of files also has some huge psychology torrents. When I was doing my undergrad degree, I wanted to do psychology instead of what I did lol So here I am decades later catching up :) Its like when I was young you could read the whole library's books. Now there is just so much knowledge online you need to quit your day job to have time to read it all lol If only I did not have to work....
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Ok, this year the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) finally got their crap together and released etax before 30 June 2013 (every single year I have existed on earth, they released it much later which delayed my tax return process as I have quarter end deadlines for work after 30 June.
Now, this year the idiot programmers at the ATO omitted to consider that most of us use windows 7 or 8 and to instal their etax2013_1.msi on these computers with windows UAC (user account control) enabled, will prevent a dll from running so the software will not run. Those idiots should release their installer as a setup.exe just like all the normal software programs.
So I did a google and found a solution
Install this registry patch which will show an "install as administrator" option on your right click menu when you right click on any .msi packages
http://www.sourcecodestore.com/Article.aspx?ID=10
This will permanently enable the install as administrator link for right clicking on .msi packages.
The alternative way is to use a shortcut key ie
right click while holding shift key, then you should have the install as administrator option. But you have to remember this every single time and lets face it, how often do you find a .msi installer when most are setup.exe
So if you have good memory this option would suit you ha ha
There you go, you can now do your tax returns...
http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Tax-Return/2013/Completing-your-return/Do-you-need-to-lodge-a-tax-return-/
I should point out that the ATO this year are really annoying. They need you to order copies of the paper version of the individual tax return forms, so I had to waste half an hour registering on the ATO website and a few days waiting for Aussie post to deliver it.. Previously, you could just pick it up at a newsagent. Guess the hippies are trying to save costs. It would have helped if they had put the postal address on the last page or something, had to waste time looking it up on their atrocious website where you can never find anything with their search engine. (I had to do a tax return for some one else for the first time so they could not use etax)
I get really excited when I do my tax returns because I can see how much my excel skills have improved lol eg I now use sumif so when I download bank statements in CSV, I just type "interest" in a column and then use =sumif(range where I have typed the word interest next to interest amounts,"interest", range with interest numbers)
and the interest will be neatly added in whatever cell is specify.
This upcoming financial year, I am going to teach myself vba for excel and financial modelling :)
Anyway, if you dont like redesigning your own spreadsheets, there are tonnes on the net to calculate taxable income which you can "borrow".
As I am trying to teach myself financial modelling, this one is one I liked:
http://www.plumsolutions.com.au/articles/201213-excel-income-tax-calculator
ps if you want to unprotect the spreadsheet to look at what is going on, the password is very very obvious :)
This one is also very nice
http://www.investmentpropertycalculator.com.au/free-australia-personal-income-tax-calculator.html
They also have tonnes of investment property related calculators which is kewl
I like this one because it has a monthly calculation tab
http://www.excel-skills.com.au/excel_templates.asp?sesreq=6632295622013630&ctime=1372564396529#IncomeTax
If you like excel templates and figuring out how other people do things, their website has tonnes of excel templates. I liked their cashflow statement one (enter bsheet and P&L to get direct and indirect cashflow) amongst others. Its Australian based so everything is better ha ha
Since the topic is about tax, I also like updating my annual budget & expenses spreadsheet around this time. Their personal finance one is pretty good. Most of the "free" ones on the net are really crap or American based. However, being married with kids means budgeting is useless, so personal budgets are only good for singles. Also, most of the budget templates that have actual expenses analysis, just require too much data manipulation to get your bank statement data to fit their categories. I mean who would want to data entry every expense payment into a spreadsheet. That is just plain stupid and time wasting.
Yes, we should all budget, but do it at a high level, eg you only need to budget for expensive items relative to your income such as major hospital operations or holidays around the world, not your daily meals and bus fares lol. My main problem has been going to the ATM and then taking out $500 then giving some to wife and kids and then not knowing where it was spent. Coding it all to meals or groceries would not be accurate as some might have gone to toys and games... therein lies the problem of using the personal budget spreadsheets which try to reconcile your bank account at the same time...
If you agree to this philosophy,then this following spreadsheet is great, it automatically shows you the days you make payments with 12 monthly snapshot and lets you forecast as you go along. Just need to put in the start month and then insert lines to put in your expenses and thats it. You could also modify it to reconcile your bank accounts by putting the account where the payments were made from but I prefer it as is during to the cash payment problem mentioned above ie ATM withdraw one amount which goes to the bank statement, but coding is a problem :)
http://www.robertmcquaig.com/blog/solutions/personal-budget-template-excel/
In terms of doing an expense summary to see where all money was spent to do your tax return, just dump the bank statement and credit card statement to csv and code using the main categories (Australian categories can be the ones in Kochie's spreadsheet: http://www.kochie.com.au/20100704161/kochies-household-budget-template) then run a pivot table et voila. If doing it for tax return purposes, probably best to code everything just once so in extra columns put whether the expense is tax deductible or not or the portion that is
Once that is done, just copy the data into a consistent format (same headings) and then you can do a pivot table consolidation using the same format data from both (or more accounts) and have all your data summarised in one pivot table :) As mentioned before, office 2013 does predictive autofill so office 2013 will make the coding of your expenses much quicker. Great to do on a rainy day just for fun :)
Note the software based personal expense management software is also a big waste of time because the coding process means you have to use your mouse to click a dropdown list to code the expenses. So the most efficient way without a doubt is using excel 2013. You can also generate all the pretty graphs to your hearts desire :)
Note the sample spreadsheets do not actually have formula when you unprotect them so you still need to use your brains when trying to get to their solutions ha ha
ps this next link is how to unprotect all excel worksheets using VB including excel 2013 Its free and easy to do :) It only takes 2 seconds unlike those software solutions that use dictionary and takes days lol
this following one is also ok (but you have to sign up for free which I hate)
http://atotaxrates.info/ato-tax-calculator/free-annual-income-tax-calculator
but their site is very useful generally so if you need to do tax returns, it is worth a visit
http://atotaxrates.info/individual-tax-rates-resident/ato-tax-rates-2013
it has all the upcoming legislation changes included
You can also check rates at ATO site and build your own spreadsheet lol
http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/How-much-income-tax-you-pay/Tax-rates/
Doing some more research about excel workbook protection..
This next website has a unique way of unprotecting excel worksheets. As long as you have winrar or some sort of archiving software installed, it looks up the sheet's password for you and I tested it to work :)
http://www.unprotect-excel-sheet.com/index.php
Just some news on protection in excel 2013:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/99bb20/how-to-protect-workbook-in-excel-2013/
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Financial Modelling links
http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/08/29/best-practice-modeling-5tips/
Excel links
http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/02/22/complete-list-of-excel-shortcuts/
http://www.bestpracticemodelling.com/downloads/example_models
ps True.Justice.One.Shot.One.Life.2012.DVDRip.XviD-F0RFUN is out :)
and Fast & Furious.2013.HDRip.X264.AAC - BiTO is a nice action movie, different from the older ones...
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Since this is searchable by google, I am looking for a Vicki Lau I knew in Hong Kong back in the early 1990s who went to KGV. If you read this, its me "WL". Your sis is Irene. I went past Broadcast Drive a few times wondering... If you read this, your bff "T" back then has my facebook details or msg me.
If anyone knows of her whereabouts or contact details, please send me a note below. May give reward :)
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