My Remax CR-3XP Alien series 1-to-5 smart car charger

With more and more electronic gadgets such as air sterilizer, dashcam, GPS, etc. in the car, couple with the occasional need to recharge my phone and/or tablet while driving, the available charging sockets in my car is not sufficient to provide power to so much devices at the same time.

My solution is to have the Remax CR-3XP Alien series 1-to-5 smart car charger that can extend one car charging socket into 2 charging sockets with independent switch and 3 USB charging ports with combined power output of up to 3.4A.

This Remax CR-3XP smart car charger is designed to sit nicely in the car cup holder. It has 2 colour options: black+gold and white. The black+gold one looks nicer and is pretty hot selling, easily got sold out in the online shops.

This Remax CR-3XP smart car charger has an LED display, which will show the car battery voltage when its 3 USB charging ports are not in used. When either one or more of its USB ports is charging some gadget, the LED display will show the charging amperage.

The photo below shows my Remax CR-3XP smart car charger in action, sitting nicely in one of the car cup holders, with one of its charging sockets connected to my MedKlinn Autoplus air sterilizer.

You can notice that there are 2 buttons beside the LED display, one on its right and another on its left, which can be used to switch on/off the power supply to its 2 charging sockets respectively.

Converting video files to be playable from USB drive in Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 display audio head unit

The Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 display audio is the stock head unit of Honda City 2017 Facelift 1.5L E/V variants.

It is able to play 4 types of multimedia files in a USB thumb drive: MP3 music, WMA music, JPEG photo, and MP4 video.

When the car parking handbrake is engaged, the video will display on the screen, otherwise, the video will become a blue screen while the music in the MP4 continue playing. This is a safety feature so that the driver will focus on driving instead of watching video on the screen. If you want to bypass this safety feature, you can search for a compatible "bypass cable" for this head unit and install it.

In order for any video to be playable in this Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 head unit, you need to convert it into MP4 format with the following custom settings:

• Frame size: 640 x 480
• Adjustment: Original
• Video codec: MPEG4
• Frame rate: 15 fps
• Bitrate type: Auto
• Audio codec: MP3
• Channels: Stereo
• Sample rate: 48000 Hz
• Audio Bitrate: 320 Kbps

Conversion can be done using a free software called Freemake Video Converter.

Although the car audio manual claimed that it is able to play video in H.264 Base Line Profile format, I have not succeed to make it work with any H.264 video.

The car audio manual also claimed that it is able to support video frame rate up to 30 fps, but if you set the fps higher than 15, the video might not be playing smoothly on the screen.

As the car audio manual has stated that it supports VGA size video only, the frame size is best to be 640x480. If you set it higher than that, the video will be totally unplayable with the "not supported resolution type" error.

Luckily, this head unit is capable to play MP3 in pretty high sample rate and bitrate. Its music playing capability is quite OK, particularly with the 8 speakers in the V variant, despite its video playing capability is really primitive.

EPF declared 6.9% (conventional) / 6.4% (shariah) dividend for 2017

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has just declared the dividend rate for financial year 2017.

If you still remember, earlier on, EPF has launched its Simpanan Shariah Islamic saving account beside its conventional saving account. Members can apply to switch their account type from conventional to Shariah at their own will.

Year 2017 was the first year of dividend declaration for Shariah account, while dividend for conventional account has been declared annually since 1952.

For year 2017, the dividend declared for conventional account is 6.9% while for Shariah account is 6.4%. The dividend has already credited into members' account, and you can check for it by login into your EPF i-Account.

The 6.9% dividend for EPF conventional account in 2017 is 21% higher than the 5.7%  dividend declared for 2016 (last year).

Calculation: (6.90-5.70)/5.70 = 1.20/5.70 = 21%

It is also 7.8% higher than the 6.4% Shariah dividend declared for the same year.

Calculation: (6.90-6.40)/6.40 = 0.50/6.40 = 7.8%

It seems that members who had opted to convert their account to Shariah might be upset and regret, due to the lower dividend in 2017.

According to EPF, the Shariah account derived its income solely from its portion of shariah assets while for conventional account, a total of 38% of the income was generated by its share of Shariah assets and 62% from non-Shariah assets.

The returns for conventional account were enhanced by the income generated from non-shariah investments following the outperformance of global banking stocks, while Shariah account does not include conventional banking stocks due to their non-Shariah compliant status.

In addition, equity impairments from shariah-compliant stocks, particularly the oil and gas, and telecommunication counters, has lowered the income of the EPF's shariah portfolio.

Is the 6.9%/6.4% dividend considered good or not? The 6.9% dividend rate is the best since year 1996. However, EPF had been consistently declaring dividends of above 7% from 1976 until 1996! The dividend rate had even been consistently above 8% during 1980-1994. So, you judge yourself!

You can click here to check the historical EPF dividend pay-out rates from 1952 until today to have a clearer picture.

Send e-Angpow with Presto and get back more cash than the amount you sent

Presto is an innovative homegrown social marketing and e-wallet platform by ACE-market listed PUC Bhd (0007). You can download the app for free in Google Play store and Apple iTune App Store.

In conjunction with the upcoming Chinese New Year 2018, Presto has enabled its users to send electronic red packets (a.k.a. e-Angpow) to their buddies in the app. The good news is, you do not need to top up any money into your Presto account to start sending your red packets.

Click here, and you can receive RM2 from Presto in your account after filling up the online form as shown below. Both new users and existing users are eligible to receive the RM2, provided you are the first 88 users of the day who submitted the online form, from 7 February 2018 until 13 February 2018.

Once you have received the RM2 in your Presto account, you can use it to send out red packet to one of your buddies. Just tap on the banner as shown below at the bottom of the app screen to start sending your red packets.

Alternatively, you can select a friend in your buddies list and there is an option for you to send red packet to the selected person too.

You can send any amount of money in your red packet, but please be noted that you need to send RM2 or more in a red packet in order to be eligible to play the Fortune Blast game.

The secret to get back more cash than the amount you sent is through this Fortune Blast game! If you sent out an RM2 red packet and it is opened by its receiver, you can easily get back at least RM5 from Fortune Blast.

If you are fast enough to blast more than 100 times within 8 seconds, your prize can be doubled to become RM10!

With the money you won from Fortune Blast, you can continue to send out more red packets to the rest of your buddies, and receive more chances to earn back even more money from Fortune Blast.

You can easily earn more than hundred within a very short period of time, even without any need of putting any money into your Presto account to start with. There is just nothing for you to lose, and many for you to gain.

In the end of the day, what can you do with the money in your Presto account? Currently, you can use it to redeem Presto deals. Later on, the money will be resided in your Presto e-wallet, which you can use to make payment at participating shops that accept Presto e-wallet payment method.

Click the link below to share this message to as many of your friends as possible, because you need them to also install Presto app in their phone before you can add them as your buddy and send/receive red packets with them.

PTPTN announced 2017 dividend for SSPN-i and SSPN-i Plus (now SSPN1M)

The Malaysia National Higher Education Fund (Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional, PTPTN) has just announced dividend for year 2017 for the education savings schemes SSPN-i (Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional) and SSPN-i Plus (now both of them combined and known as SSPN1M) on 30 January 2018.

The 2017 SSPN1M dividend payout rate is 4%, amounting to RM92.56 million. This rate is the same as previous payout for 2015 and 2016.

 In 2017, the amount of deposits in  SSPN1M was RM727.40 million, surpassing the original target of RM550 million, with 447,039 new accounts opened by depositors.

According to PTPTN, the number of SSPN1M accounts opened to date is 3.2 million, with deposits amounting to about RM3.3 billion.

Historical SSPN-i dividend payout rate is as below:

• 2017: 4.00%
• 2016: 4.00%
• 2015: 4.00%
• 2014: 4.25%
• 2013: 4.25%
• 2012: 4.25%
• 2011: 3.75%
• 2010: 3.25%
• 2009: 2.50%
• 2008: 4.00%
• 2007: 4.00%
• 2006: 4.00%
• 2005: 4.00%
• 2004: 3.00%

You can proceed to the Online SSPN-i Statement of Account website for checking of the transactions and amount of savings in your kid's SSPN1M account.

FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 soccer match schedule

The 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia is near the corner now!

It will start on 14 June 2018 and last for one month until 15 July 2018.

You can look up to the schedule of all its matches in this website:
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/matches/index.html
You can also click here to download the match schedule in PDF file.

The time shown on the webpage is Russia local time. Just click on "change to your time" to switch it to your local time. Remember to adjust the date yourself because the date shown on the webpage will remain as the date in Russia as well.

The first match will be Russia vs Saudi Arabia at 14 June 2018 6pm.

You might also be interested to read about:

• The historical relationship between FIFA World Cup and stock market performance

Bank Negara increased OPR to 3.25%

As expected, Bank Negara (BNM) has, at its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting today (25 January 2018), made the decision to increase the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) by 25 basis points from 3% to 3.25%.

This is the reverse of the last action taken on 13 July 2016, which reduced the OPR by 25 basis points from 3.25% to 3%.

For investors, if you are holding shares of financial institutions, this is a short term good news to you. If you are holding shares which the company is having high debt/equity (D/E) ratio, you need to evaluate how much will this OPR rise impact on the company's financial situation.

If you are planning to take a hire purchase (eg. buying a vehicle), act fast before the borrowing interest rate increases soon. If you are serving a home loan, expect your monthly commitment to your mortgage to slightly increase from now on.

You might probably also be interested to read about:

• How the OPR can affect the economic climate

Book: Algorithms Notes for Professionals

An algorithm is a procedure or formula for solving a problem, based on conducting a sequence of specified actions.

Algorithm plays an important role in software engineering. It is one of the major subjects compulsory for students studying computer science, computer engineering or similar IT course in university/college.

Algorithms Notes for Professionals is a freely downloadable PDF e-book compiled from Stack Overflow Documentation, released under Creative Common BY-SA.

Among the algorithms discussed in this e-book are:

• Graph
• Graph Traversals
• Dijkstra’s Algorithm
• A* Pathfinding
• Dynamic Programming
• Kruskal's Algorithm
• Greedy Algorithms
• Prim's Algorithm
• Bellman–Ford Algorithm
• Line Algorithm
• Floyd-Warshall Algorithm
• Catalan Number Algorithm
• polynomial-time bounded algorithm for Minimum Vertex Cover
• Multithreaded Algorithms
• Knuth Morris Pratt (KMP) Algorithm
• Edit Distance Dynamic Algorithm
• Online algorithms
• Big-O Notation
• Sorting
• Bubble Sort
• Merge Sort
• Insertion Sort
• Bucket Sort
• Quicksort
• Counting Sort
• Heap Sort
• Cycle Sort
• Odd-Even Sort
• Selection Sort
• Trees
• Binary Search Trees
• Binary Tree traversals
• Lowest common ancestor of a Binary Tree
• Searching
• Substring Search
• Breadth-First Search
• Depth First Search
• Hash Functions
• Travelling Salesman
• Knapsack Problem
• Matrix Exponentiation
• Equation Solving
• Longest Common Subsequence
• Longest Increasing Subsequence
• Dynamic Time Warping
• Pascal's Triangle
• Fast Fourier Transform
• Algo:- Print a m*n matrix in square wise
• Check two strings are anagrams
• Dynamic Programming

It is a very handy reference book for software engineers and computer science students.

Click here to download Algorithms Notes for Professionals for free.

How to apply for MyDeposit to get government to pay for deposit of your 1st home

If you are a Malaysian who plans to buy the first home in your lifetime, you ought to act quickly to apply for the MyDeposit Scheme so that the government will pay for the 10% deposit of your first home for the amount up to RM30,000. As long as the terms and conditions are met, you need not repay back this money to the government.

This will definitely able to help you to save a substantial amount of money to own your first home.

Application for MyDeposit Scheme has already been opened since 15 December 2017 and will be closed on 15 February 2018.

Among the terms and conditions for this MyDeposit Scheme are:

• You must be a Malaysia citizen.
• Application can be made as a household (husband and wife) or as an individual for unmarried persons.
• It must be for the first home in your lifetime. For husband and wife, both of them cannot own any home under their name before or during the application.
• Age of applicant must be 21 years old and above.
• The applicant must be earning a monthly income (in order to be eligible to buy a home), and the household monthly income must between RM3,000 to RM15,000.
• You must have a clean CCRIS record.
• The home to be bought must be from a new housing development project. It is NOT applicable to buying of subsale home, building house on a land with own contractor, PR1MA, PPA1M, RUMAWIP, PPR, MyHome and any Rumah Mampu Milik.
• The price of the home (as stated in S&P document) must not exceed RM500,000.
• You have not signed the S&P of the home before getting approval of your MyDeposit application.
• You must sign the S&P with your developer within 30 days after getting approval for your MyDeposit.
• The approved amount of money will be paid directly to your developer.
• You cannot rent out the home under this scheme. It must be for your own family stay only.
• You cannot sell the home within 10 years from the date of S&P.

Under normal situation, you are not required to return your approved MyDeposit money to the government. However, you will need to return it to the government under the following condition:

• You are not able to fulfil the home loan instalment and the home is put on bank auction.

To apply for this MyDeposit Scheme, you need to register an online account in SPRN website and follow the instruction from there.

Click here for more information about this MyDeposit Scheme.

Good luck!

RM500 matching grant (GS500) to be given free to SSPN new deposit in 2018 for primary school beneficiaries

On top of the recent good news about SSPN-I tax relief of RM6000 max has been extended until year 2020, the National Education Savings Scheme (Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional, SSPN-i) setup by the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional, PTPTN) for the purpose of higher education has on 2 January 2018 announced another good news for all existing and new SSPN depositors whose beneficiary is studying in primary school.

The good news is...

The government has allocated a fund for the first 500,000 existing and new SSPN depositors who deposited at least RM500 new fund into their account during 2018, whose beneficiary is studying in primary school. These accounts will received a free matching grant incentive of RM500 in their SSPN account (Insentif Geran Sepadan Percuma RM500 a.k.a. GS500).

 

The terms and conditions are for this GS500 are as follow:

• This RM500 free matching grant incentive is only allocated to 500,000 eligible SSPN accounts on and first come first serve basis.
• The age of the beneficiary of the SSPN account is between 7 to 12 years old or is studying in primary school in Malaysia.
• New fund of RM500 must be deposited into the SSPN account between 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018 (deposit - withdrawal >= RM500).
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive can only be withdrawn after the beneficiary has reached the age of 18 years old, or during closure of account due to either the depositor or beneficiary has passed away.
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive cannot be used for tax relief.
• This RM500 free matching grant incentive will be automatically given to the eligible SSPN accounts. There is no form to be filled up.

Fund can be deposited into existing SSPN account using FPX real-time online payment after login into the online SSPN-I Statement of Account website.

Source of reference:

• Simpanan RM500 Percuma, RM500 Untuk 500,000 Pelajar

 

 

PayNet Instant Transfer fee for individual and SME to be zerorized by 1 July 2018

I remember that during early December 2017, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) had announced a fee waiver of 53 sen (with GST) of PayNet Instant Transfer fee to be effective in 2018. PayNet is a merged entity of MyClear and MEPS.

Now we have already reached the year 2018, but when I checked on the banks' online transfer function, the 53 sen Instant Transfer fee (with GST) is still there. Am I missing something?

Yes! The effective date of this Instant Transfer fee waiver is on 1 July 2018, so there are a few more months to go.

In addition, I have found out that there are conditions for this Instant Transfer fee waiver as below:

• Only bank account belonged to individual and SME can enjoy the fee waiver. The waiver is not applicable to bank account of big corporations.
• To enjoy the fee waiver, the maximum amount of money in the transaction should limited to RM5,000 only. If you want to transfer more than that using Instant Transfer, and yet want to enjoy the fee waiver, perhaps can break the amount down and perform multiple transfers, with each transaction not exceeding RM5,000.