Thursday, August 20, 2020

38 KLSE stocks that show continuous net profit growth

As I mentioned before, Rakuten Trade has a handy and useful Stock Screener function which includes Detailed Analysis powered by Thomson Reuters.

You can use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account for free.

We can find the following 38 stocks with net profit chart that shows continuous growth over the recent years and forecasted to continue growing in the upcoming 2 years, by a quick screening through the Detailed Analysis. This is useful to perform initial filtering for investment stock picking.

Among the 38 stocks, 32 of them show consistent continuous net profit growth, while I opined that another 6 worth to add into this list although their graph is not as perfect as the 32.

The 32 stocks, sorted by their counter number, are as follow. Note that the price information at the top right corner of the graphs is the last matched price before market closing on Wednesday 19 August 2020.

0001 SCOMNET


0002 KOTRA

0021 GHLSYS

0037 RGB

0080 STRAITS

0128 FRONTKN

0169 SMTRACK

0176 KRONO

0200 REVENUE

0208 GREATEC

0215 SLVEST

0218 ACO

0219 RL

0220 OVH

0221 TCS

03017 UNIWALL

3034 HAPSENG

4731 SCIENTX

5008 HARISON

5077 MAYBULK

5102 GCB

5156 XDL

5279 SERBADK

7013 HUBLINE

7029 MASTER

7084 QL

7160 PENTA

7181 ARBB

7277 DIALOG

9296 RCECAP

9687 IDEAL

9792 SEG

and the other 6 stocks are:

5250 SEM

5292 UWC

7034 TGUAN

7091 UNIMECH

7148 DPHARMA

7153 KOSSAN


Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

FileRun - self-hosted file sharing and content collaboration solution for personal, family or enterprise

I was looking for a multimedia content sharing solution to perform some sort of e-library function in a hosted server.

I would like to upload documents, e-books, presentation slides, audio files, video files, and the like to the system. Those content then can be accessible by particular persons and/or group of persons that I assigned permission with. They should be able to open the content directly in web browser in their desktop, tablet or mobile phone. For editable content such as text files, MS Office documents, LibreOffice documents, etc., they should be able to edit the file directly in the web browser, if I give them the "edit" permission.

First thing I thought of was Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or similar cloud drive available in the Internet. However, those services will have stringent quota limitation, less flexible for me to control users and access rights, and does not have certain feature that I need.

Then, I looked into ownCloud, Nextcloud, and the like. They are a bit too complicated for both the users and administrator. They contain excessive features and functions that I don't need. Worse still, I found that they have little bugs here and there which I couldn't resolve nor found workable solution in the Internet.

Finally, I settled down with FileRun which run in LAMP environment. It is simple, easy to use, and has a nice user interface.


It even has special handling for photos and audio/music by making use of the metadata embedded in those multimedia files. I hope that in the future version, this can be extended to video files too.



Installation of FileRun to an existing LAMP platform is pretty easy too. There are 2 files to download:


After download, rename the FileRun zip file to just FileRun.zip without version number in its filename.

Upload both FileRun.zip and unzip.php to a web-accessible folder in your web server.

Use your web browser to access to unzip.php in your web server, and follow the step-by-step instruction to complete your installation.


You can even install FileRun in Synology DiskStation and RackStation NAS. Click here for the instruction to install FileRun on Synology network attached storage.

With FileRun, you can manage and organize your files, tag them for easier searching, bookmark certain files into your collections and/or starred folder.

You can share your folders and files to other users and groups in FileRun, and determine whether they can perform upload, download, make changes, share links, read comments, or add comments.

You can also create weblinks to share files or folders to be accessible by other FileRun users or external users without any FileRun account in your system.

You can put an expiration date for your weblink, limit its download, set a password before the linked file can be accessed, require user login before the linked file can be accessed, etc.


I find FileRun very suitable for simple e-library system for file sharing and content collaboration in self-hosted server. You can even access your files directly from Windows Explorer via WebDAV. It even has a Mozilla Thunderbird FileLink addon to enable you to send large file in your email.





Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Updated the firmware of my Samsung Xpress M2885FW printer to version 3.00.01.18

Despite Samsung printer business had been bought over by HP since 2017, there is still new firmware release for my Samsung Xpress M2885FW printer recently in mid-July 2020 to version 3.00.01.18.

You can download this latest firmware from HP Customer Support Website for Samsung Printers here. The filename is M2885_V3.00.01.18.zip with size of 17.2MB.

After unzip, you can find the following files in it.


If your printer is connected to your computer with USB cable, the firmware update is pretty easy.
  • Make sure the printer is idle with no printing/scanning/faxing job running.
  • Drag and drop the file SWUPGRADE-ON.prn to usblist2.exe.
  • After that, drag and drop the file M2885_V3.00.01.18.hd to usblist2.exe.
  • The firmware update process will start in the printer. The printer will reboot itself at the end of the process.
You can check for the firmware version running in the printer by accessing the printer's IP address using your web browser and login into its SyncThru Web Service and navigate to Maintenance > Firmware Upgrade.



Another way to update your printer's firmware is by clicking on the Upgrade Wizard button on the webpage as shown above, and select the file M2885_V3.00.01.18.hd from your computer.

Here is the changelog of the firmware for this printer for your reference.



Friday, August 7, 2020

Bursa Malaysia RM150 cashback for ETF investment

There are 19 Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) listed in Bursa Malaysia, and majority of them are thinly traded.

One of the more active one is GOLDETF (0828EA), which is also risen the most among the ETFs in Bursa Malaysia, with more than 28% 1 year historical return as of today.

Bursa Malaysia has just rolled out an ETF cashback program. An investor who invests (buys) one or multiple Bursa-listed ETFs with cumulative value of RM3,000 and above within the program period will be eligible to receive Touch ‘n Go eWallet Reload PIN worth RM150.


Terms and conditions:
  • Program period is valid from 3 August to 2 November, 2020.
  • Investors who invest (buy) one or multiple Bursa-Listed ETFs (stock code beginning with "08") with cumulative value of RM3,000 and above within the Program period will be eligible to receive a Touch ' Go eWallet Reload PIN worth RM150.
  • All above ETF buy trades must be carried out in the investor's Direct CDS Account.
  • Investors who have not made any buy or sell trades in Bursa-listed ETFs from 1 January 2020 until 2 August 2020 are eligible for this Program.
  • Limited to the first 500 eligible investors only.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Renting a Medklinn air ionizer instead of buying it

Among the many air and surface sterilizing products in the market, Medklinn ionizer has been proven effective in sterilizing the air and surface around it by killing the bacteria and viruses,  as well as eliminating allergens, bad odours, smoke, dust, moulds and pollution.



Recently, Medklinn has started to provide renting as an option to use their air ionizer, other than buying it.

Benefits of renting instead of buying:

  • You can terminate the rental after a minimum 3 months period. This enables you to try out the product with small cost, after that, you may opt to continue or terminate the renting. Upon termination, you can opt to buy a brand new product, or just discontinue using the product.
  • You will get 1-to-1 replacement for faulty, malfunction or damaged unit, provided it is not intentionally damaged.
  • You will get free cartridge replacement every year, until the end of rental period after 3 years.

Disbenefit of renting instead of buying:
  • After 3 years, when the rental period is completed, you need to return the unit to Medklinn.
  • The total cost of using the unit with renting for 3 years is higher than buying the product and buying new replacement cartridge every year.

Other considerations:
  • The warranty period of Medklinn product is 15 months, after you register your bought product in their website. By renting, you effectively extend the warranty period of your product to 36 months.
  • Normally, Medklinn will come out with new model every 2-3 years. By renting, you can always use the latest model of the product. Even if you buy and keep the product, being an electronic product, it will still have a lifespan and will degrade from year to year.
  • If you buy the product, certain credit card allows you to split the cost to 12 months installment. If you rent the product, your credit card will be charged at a relatively smaller amount every month for 36 months.
For the case of Medklinn Asens+20 indoor ionizer:

If you opt for buying, the cost is:
  • Medklinn Asens+20 = RM560
  • 2x cartridge = 2 x RM139 = RM278
Total cost (3 years) = RM838

If you opt for renting, the cost is:
  • 1st year = 12 x RM36 = RM432
  • 2nd year = 12 x RM25 = RM300
  • 3rd year = 12 x RM16 = RM192
  • 2x cartridge = RM0
Total cost (3 years) = RM924

Different between renting and buying = RM86

For the case of Medklinn Autoplus car ionizer:


If you opt for buying, the cost is:
  • Medklinn Autoplus = RM439
  • 2x cartridge = 2 x RM90 = RM180
Total cost (3 years) = RM619

If you opt for renting, the cost is:
  • 1st year = 12 x RM26 = RM312
  • 2nd year = 12 x RM19 = RM228
  • 3rd year = 12 x RM13 = RM156
  • 2x cartridge = RM0
Total cost (3 years) = RM696

Different between renting and buying = RM77

So, which option is better for you? You decide yourself.


Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Strategic Doing - 10 Skills for Agile Leadership

Strategic Doing - 10 Skills for Agile Leadership is a book published in 2019 by Wiley and authored by Edward Morrison, Scott Hutcheson, Elizabeth Nilsen, Janyce Fadden, and Nancy Franklin. Famous musician Yo-Yo Ma (马友友) has written the foreword for it.


Undeniably, complex challenges are all around us nowadays. They impact our companies, our communities, and our planet. This complexity and the emergence of networks are changing the practice of strategic management.

Today’s leaders need to understand how to design and guide complex collaborations to accelerate innovation and change - collaborations that cross boundaries both inside and outside organizations.

Strategic Doing introduces you to the new disciplines of agile strategy and collaborative leadership. You’ll learn how to design and guide complex collaborations by following a discipline of simple rules that you won’t find anywhere else.
  • Unleash the power of true collaboration
  • Learn and master the 10 skills of agile leadership
  • Apply individual skills to targeted situations
  • Introduces a new discipline of leadership strategy

Filled with compelling case studies, Strategic Doing outlines a new discipline of leadership strategy specifically designed for open, loosely-connected networks.

The book’s authors are both practitioners and teachers of Strategic Doing, helping others to master the skills. Solidly based in research, Strategic Doing explains each of the skills in detail and clearly illustrates how individual skills are used as part of effective collaboration.

The 10 skills for agile leadership as discussed in the book encompass:
  • Create and maintain a safe space for deep, focused conversation
  • Frame the conversation with the right question
  • Identify your assets, including the hidden ones
  • Link and leverage assets to identify new opportunities
  • Look for the “Big Easy”
  • Convert your ideas to outcomes with measurable characteristics
  • Start slowly to go fast – But start
  • Draft short-term action plans that include everyone
  • Set 30/30 meetings to review, learn, and adjust
  • Nudge, connect, and promote to reinforce new habits

This 188 pages book is available in both physical format as well as e-book format.


Thursday, July 9, 2020

Renewed Malaysia passport in 11 minutes during RMCO period

My passport was about to expire in less than 6 months time. I planned to renew it online, but the system said due to their internal problem, I was not able to proceed with the online passport renewal and need to do it by going to an immigration office.

You can click here to try your luck to renew your Malaysia passport online. Before you proceed with the online passport renewal, you need to take your passport photograph at a professional photo shop to be uploaded to the system. After you've completed the online passport renewal process and made the payment online, you will still need to go to the immigration office with relevant documents, including a printed copy of the payment receipt, in order to collect your new passport.

If you plan to do your passport renewal at the immigration office, it is not necessary to take passport photograph, as your passport photograph will be taken at the immigration office, free of charge. Even though you have brought your own photo, the officer will still insist you to take a new photo at their photo booth.

Since I was not able to renew my passport online, I made an appointment to visit the UTC Shah Alam Immigration Office located at Level 2 of Kompleks UTC Selangor (Anggerik Mall). During current recovery movement control order (RMCO) period, it is a must to make prior appointment before going to the immigration office.

You can click here to make online appointment with immigration office.

Note that you need to make separate appointment for each person going to the immigration office. For my case, I brought my kid together to renew his passport as well. Therefore, I made 2 appointments, one for myself and one for my kid, both at the same timeslot.

Kompleks UTC Selangor (Anggerik Mall) is quite easy to reach with the aid of Google Maps. You can easily identify the building with its big UTC Selangor signage as shown in the photo below. It was quite easy to get a parking bay there. The parking is not free, but its hourly rate is pretty reasonable.


The immigration office is located at Level 2 in the building. We need to fill in a form for each person and submit all the required documents to the reception counter there, before we can get a queue number chit to be served.

Required documents for an adult to renew passport:
  • Existing passport (original)
  • MYKAD (original)
  • Printed copy of the appointment email received after the online appointment was made

Required documents for kids below 18 years old to renew passport:
  • Existing passport (original)
  • MYKID/MYKAD (both original and photocopy)
  • Birth certificate (both original and photocopy)
  • MYKAD of the parent who brings the kid to the immigration office (both original and photocopy)
  • Printed copy of the appointment email received after the online appointment was made

If you forgot to bring any of the required original documents, then that's too bad, you need to make another visit again with the complete set of required documents.

If you forgot to photocopy any of the required photocopies, no worry, expensive photocopy service is available at the shop just next door.

If you forgot to print out your appointment email, also no worry, expensive email printing service is available at the same shop next door, provided that you can access to that email with your handphone.

One more thing! If you forgot to bring the person (such as your kid) along, the passport also cannot be issued to the person, as thumbprints verification is an imperative process. The passport holder needs to be present at the immigration office.

Quite surprisingly, there were very few people coming for immigration office service today, probably because now is still RMCO period. We managed to complete the whole process, from getting the queue number chits for 2 persons, then attended by an immigration officer, had our left and right thumbprints verified, took our photo, made the payments at payment counter, put the payment receipts into a basket at Counter 8, wait for a while and collect our new passport, all completed in just 11 minutes.


Anyhow, the immigration office in UTC Selangor has made a KPI that all passports shall be ready for collection within 1 hour after payment made.

Note that payment can only be made either using credit card or debit card. Cash payment is not available.

Passport cover can be purchased at the passport collection counter. The price is RM5 each. There are 2 types of passport cover, the old type in darker red colour has a more solid feel, and the new type in lighter red colour is a piece of soft plastic. This passport cover is optional.


Friday, July 3, 2020

Choosing the correct cable to connect DVB-T2 television to aerial wall socket

Since August 2019, Malaysia free over-the-air television broadcasting has been switched from analogue to digital.

The good news is, nowadays most newer model of television has built-in DVB-T2 decoder to receive digital over-the-air TV channels.

If your house/condominium/apartment has an aerial wall socket that connects to the external aerial antenna of the building that looks like the one below, you can use a TV cable with male-to-female connectors to connect your TV with DVB-T2 decoder to the TV wall socket and receive the broadcasted digital TV channels.

If your TV is facing problem of missing channels, pixelated screen, snowy screen due to weak signal strength and/or weak signal quality, it can probably be caused by the type of cable used.

Referring to the table below, if you are staying in a highrise building, the cable buried inside the call connecting the wall socket to the external antenna should be coaxial cable of type RG11/U.

If you are staying in landed property which the distance between the external antenna and the wall socket is below 225 meters, then maybe RG6/U cable still be used without much problem.


For the portion of cable connecting your TV to the wall socket, RG6/U cable is recommended. Using RG11/U cable is even better, but its cost will be higher too.

If you are using RG59/U cable but don't face any problem with your TV, then you can continue using it, otherwise, consider upgrade the cable to RG6/U.

In the photo below, the black cable is type RG59/U and the white cable is type RG6/U. You can easily notice that the RG6/U has a much thicker diameter than RG59/U.


If your TV problem persists despite using RG6/U cable, you might probably need to resort to other solution, such as adding a signal booster, using digital TV decoder box, or receiving the TV signal using an internal antenna.



Monday, June 29, 2020

Generating PHP codes for mobile-friendly web database applications with AppGini rapid development tool

AppGini by Bigprof Software is a rapid web application development tool for the PHP and MySQL web service stack.

It is very easy to use, and very handy to generate up-and-running mobile-friendly web database applications instantly at one mouse click, without the need of writing any programming code.

With AppGini, it is possible for you to save hundreds of man-hours spent in prototyping, programming, design and testing your web application.


AppGini is a Windows application. As such, it is best suit with Laragon as the WAMP development platform to receive the PHP codes generated by Appgini, so that you can immediately test out the generated web application within the same computer.

If you are using Linux or Mac OS, you can also install AppGini in your computer through PlayOnLinux or PlayOnMac.

Below are 2 of the screens in the generated web application, with sample data, using AppGini's default template. You can modify the looks and feels of the screen by choosing another theme of template and layout options.

 
 

The PHP codes generated by AppGini are pretty clean and neat.

In 1 or 2 man-days, by using AppGini, you should be able to produce a fully functional Northwind Orders system with ACL (access control) mechanism from zero. Imagine how many man-days you need to produce the same amount of PHP codes as shown below, by manual coding.


Northwind Orders system is used by Bigprof to demo the work produced by AppGini. You can access to its live demo system here, and can even download its generated source codes here. Beside Northwind, there are more open source web applications generated by AppGini which you can download here.

You don't even need to know about PHP programming in order to create web application using AppGini. Anyhow, you need to have basic knowledge on software development and concept of relational database to master the use of AppGini quickly.

Therefore, I found AppGini an ideal tool for educational purpose to teach and learn about web database CRUD programming concept, and also relational database concept, including the data structure, normalization, joining of tables, keys & constraints, etc.

Of course, AppGini is also ideal for software developer to quickly come out with something, then to further customize on the generated codes. This approach can really save a lot of time and effort.

AppGini is a trialware. You can click here to download AppGini free trial edition, which has no time limit of use, but has limitation on some key functions, including unable to save your AppGini project for future use.

If you like it, you can order its full version at the price of US$79.90 per user. I found that this price is one of the cheapest among its competitor products such as Scriptcase, PHPMaker, CodeCharge Studio, Dadabik, etc.

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.