Auspicious dates for baby first haircut (Mundan) in 2016

In many culture, religion and/or tradition, the first haircut of a baby is considered an important milestone for his/her life. The day is known as Mundan, Chadakarana, Halaqah, Upsherin, etc.

Here is the list of auspicious dates for baby first haircut in year 2016, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Auspicious dates in 2016 for getting a baby

Here is the list of auspicious dates in 2016 for getting a baby (求嗣), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.

The dates have good element(s) to embro/faetus. Traditionally, the dates are referred for conception planning (making love and expecting a baby to the family). Nowadays, people also make reference to them for Caesarian delivery of new born.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Register free Comexe Dynamic DNS domain name and use it in TP-Link router

Dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS) is a way for you to access to your home network from the Internet even if your ISP is assigning dynamic (non-fixed) IP address to you.

With DDNS configured in your router, you can access your home network using a domain name, regardless of what the IP address of your router has changed to.

TP-Link router provides 3 options of DDNS to setup with, namely:

• Comexe
• DyDNS
• No-IP

Among the three of them, Comexe provides free DDNS service, and doesn't need periodical account confirmation.

In order to use Comexe DDNS service, you need to register an account in their website:
http://www.comexe.net/member/reg_login.php

There are 5 fields for you to fill in:

• The 1st field "用户名" is your preferred account name, comprises of 3 to 16 characters. For free Comexe DDNS service, your free dynamic domain name is fixed to be your_account_name.kmdns.net. So, set your account name carefully.
• The 2nd field "登录密码" is your preferred password comprises 6 to 16 characters.
• The 3rd field "确认密码" is to reconfirm your preferred password.
• The 4th field "电子邮箱" is your email address, which will be used to reset your password in case you forget it in the future.
• The 5th field "验证码" is a captcha verification. Just key in the characters you see in the image.

When you are done, click on the left button "注册" below to register your account. The right button "取消" is a cancel button.

The registration might take some time. Do not refresh your browser while it is still running. You need to be a little bit patient.

If your account is successfully registered, you will reach the screen that looks like below.

Now, go to this URL directly: http://www.comexe.net/member/domain_free.php

You should be able to see your free DDNS domain name is ready for activation. You need to click on the "立即开通" button to activate it before it can be used.

Upon successful activation, you will see the message similar to this:

Next, login to your TP-Link router, and go to Dynamic DNS configuration section.

Select Comexe (www.comexe.cn) as your Service Provider, then enter your DDNS domain name and provide your account name (user name) and password in Comexe.

Make sure you ticked the "Enable DDNS" option, can click the Login button.

If you see the word "Succeeded!" in the Connection Status, then your dynamic domain name is up and running now. You can then proceed to click the Save button to save the DDNS configuration in the router.

In future, if you want to disable the DDNS service, just untick the "Enable DDNS" option and click the Logout button.

You can go to System Tools > Diagnostic section of your TP-Link router to ping your dynamic domain name. You should be able to see that your dynamic domain name is now bound to the current IP address of your router's WAN interface.

Auspicious dates for moving to new house / office in 2016

Here is the list of auspicious dates for moving to new house/office in year 2016, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Using My U Mobile app to check monthly plan quota usage and perform other account management

Nowadays most Telco already have mobile apps for smartphone in Android and/or iOS to check for our prepaid or postpaid subscription plan quota usage and perform other account management, including doing top-up or monthly payment, etc.

Such official Android apps for various Malaysian telcos are:

• U Mobile: My U Mobile
• Digi: MyDigi
• Maxis: MyMaxis
• Hotlink: Hotlink Red
• Tune Talk: Tune Talk
• XOX: MyXOX

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any official Android app for Celcom (either postpaid or Xpax).

Among them, I found that My U Mobile is so far the best mobile app which is very clear and straightforward for checking quota balance with its simple user interface.

In its My Plan screen, you can clearly see what is the subscribed plan, what are included in the subscription package, and each of their individual real time quota usage, all displayed in one screen.

The mobile apps of other telcos also provide similar information, but might be spreading the information into several screens, and/or the user interface is not as straightforward to the user.

In the same My U Mobile app, you can also check your bill statements and perform bill payment with credit card too.

You can also use it to apply for U Card to collect points and enjoy privileges. The U Card can stay virtual inside your smart phone too.

I think My U Mobile is so far the best official Malaysian telco app in terms of design and development. However, it could be the worst in terms of maintenance and support.

Like you can see in the above screen about U Promotion, the same Starbucks 10% discount for U Card members repeated 3 times, showing poor quality control. We would expect it to show only once per item, or if it repeats, there should be some different between each items, and not exactly the same.

In addition, the server of this My U Mobile seems to be pretty unstable. Users can be completely cut off from the server for more than one week, rendering the app completely unusable. Worse still, there is no announcement or information from U Mobile explaining what happened to the downtime, and when will the service be available again, leaving their users in complete darkness.

So, I've experienced the best design and usability, together with the worst maintenance and support for this My U Mobile app. Can't we get the best from both side to have a perfect service?

Switched telco plan of my tablet from Digi Tablet 1GB plan to U Mobile U28 3GB plan

About 2 months ago, Digi started to offer a new RM25 SmartPlan with 1GB monthly Internet data quota.

I contacted Digi to find a way to switch over my Digi Tablet 1GB plan (RM29/month) to this RM25 SmartPlan. Disappointedly, Digi told me there is no way to switch over, unless I terminate the existing Tablet 1GB subscription, and reapply for a new RM25 SmartPlan subscription.

Since there is no flexibility to switch over to the new plan, I wondered if there is any other better postpaid plan from Celcom, Maxis or U Mobile for my tablet, and I found U Mobile U28.

The monthly subscription of this U Mobile U28 is about the same as the Digi Tablet 1GB plan, and is in fact RM1 cheaper.

However, it provides 3GB monthly Internet data quota, which is triple of what the old Digi Tablet 1GB or the new Digi RM25 SmartPlan is offering.

On top of that, there are free voice call minutes and free SMS every month, which is not available in the Digi counterpart plan. Anyhow, it is very rare for me to use the tablet to make phone call or send out SMS, although I do use it to receive SMS.

Similar to Digi SmartPlan, I can listen to KKBox music with U Mobile all day long without using up my Internet quota, with their free music streaming service.

U Mobile also provides free YouTube and Tonton video streaming, but only within the very odd time period from 2am to 10am everyday.

As a result, after terminated my Digi Tablet 1GB plan, I switched over to U Mobile U28 plan to have a try.

Now, after about 2 months of usage, I decided to stay with U Mobile.

I found that in many places in urban area, the Internet speed of U Mobile is about the same with Digi. I some places, it is even better than Digi. In certain rural areas where U Mobile only able to provide EDGE or GPRS data speed, I still have my Celcom First Plan in my smartphone as backup Internet. After all, Celcom is still having the best rural coverage among the telcos now.

Upgraded the firmware of my TP-Link TL-WA860RE 300Mbps WiFi range extender to Version 3.15.8 Build 150820 Rel.40814n

I have just upgraded the firmware of my TP-Link TL-WA860RE 300Mbps WiFi range extender to Version 3.15.8 Build 150820 Rel.40814n.

The most visible enhancement to this new firmware is the addition of Proxy Mode on top of the existing Universal Mode and WDS Mode of operation.

The Proxy Mode is said to have the best compatibility with routers and access points of all brands. If your range extender has problem working in Universal Mode and WDS Mode, you can try using this Proxy Mode. However, it may decrease the overall performance.

Note that you might lost all your existing settings in the TL-WA860RE after the firmware upgrade. Anyhow, there are not much settings for the device, so you can redo all the settings without taking up much of your time and effort.

You can click here to download the firmware for TP-Link TL-WA860RE version 3.15.8.

To perform the upgrade, unzip the downloaded file to get the wa860rev1_en_3_15_8_up_boot(150820).bin file.

Login to the WiFi range extender, and go to System Tools > Firmware Upgrade to perform the upgrade.

I strongly recommend you to connect to the device using a LAN cable instead of connecting through WiFi to perform the firmware upgrade.

Setting up IPv6 in TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router for TM UniFi Internet

IPv6 is finally supported in the latest Malaysian firmware version 3.14.3 Build 150605 Rel.53236n for TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router.

The available IPv6 Internet connection types are:

• DHCPv6
• Static IPv6
• PPPoEv6
• Tunnel 6to4

So far, I only able to make the Tunnel 6to4 work in my router. I am not able to obtain IPv6 address with the other 3 connection types.

Here is the way to setup the TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router to support IPv6 network with TM UniFi, using Tunnel 6to4 method.

Go to IPv6 Support > IPv6 Setup, and enable the IPv6, choose "Tunnel 6to4" as the WAN connection type.

Set the MTU Size to be 1472, which is 20 bytes less than the MTU Size of 1492 set for the IPv4 in PPPoE Advanced Settings page.

To make use of Google DNS servers, set your primary and secondary IPv6 DNS servers to be

2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 respectively.

Leave the LAN IPv6 Address Assign Type as SLAAC.

 

Click the Save button and you are done. You should be able to see your IPv6 address and settings in the IPv6 Status page now.

You can test your IPv6 connectivity with this website: http://test-ipv6.com/

Note that you won't be able to get a 10/10 score with Tunnel 6to4 connection. The website will just give you a 7/10. This is absolutely fine, as long as you don't get MTU related error which is the common headache in IPv6 setting.

Next, you can compare your Internet access speed to Japan when using IPv4 and IPv6. Both connection speeds are, in fact, surprisingly very different.

URL to test IPv4 connection speed from your location to the Japan server: http://www.speedtest6.com/

URL to test IPv6 connection speed from your location to the same Japan server: http://ipv6.speedtest6.com/

Below is the ping result from my computer to www.google.com using IPv4 and IPv6:

Upgraded the firmware of my TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router to version 3.14.3 Build 150605 Rel.53236n with UniFi and Maxis Fiber support

I have just upgraded the firmware of my TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router to the latest version 3.14.3 Build 150605 Rel.53236n with UniFi and Maxis Fiber support from the previous Build 130829.

Noticeable new features in this new version of TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router firmware for UniFi and Maxis Fiber high speed broadband are:

1. Guest Network

This feature has been made available to the universal version of firmware for TL-WDR3600 router for quite a long time ago, but is just newly available for its firmware version with UniFi and Maxis Fiber support.

Now, we can provide guest WiFi Internet access to our visitors with a separated SSID and password, and can determine whether the guest connections can communicate with the other hosts (computers, network printers, etc.) in our LAN or not.

We can also restrict the upload and download bandwidth for guest network with bandwidth control.

In addition, we can define the time period that make available the guest network.

We also have an option to allow the guest network to have access to the shared folder in the USB storage device connected to the router, using a separate login and password, with different storage authority.

2. Application Layer Gateway (ALG) for SIP

This is to allow some multimedia clients to communicate across NAT.

3. IPv6 Support

This feature has been made available to the universal version of firmware for TL-WDR3600 router for quite a long time ago, but is just newly available for its firmware version with UniFi and Maxis Fiber support.

You can click here to learn about how I set up IPv6 in this TL-WDR3600 to work with UniFi Internet.

4. New login mechanism

The login mechanism of this new firmware has changed, and seems to be not backward compatible with the older version. You can no longer login the router with your old credential after the firmware upgrade.


You can click here to download the TL-WDR3600 firmware version 3.14.3 with UniFi and Maxis Fiber support.

To perform the upgrade, unzip the downloaded file to get the wdr3600v1_malaysiaVLAN_en_3_14_3_up_boot(150605).bin file.

Login to the router, and go to System Tools > Firmware Upgrade to perform the upgrade.

Important note:

Your router configurations will be reset to default after the firmware upgrade. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to copy down or screen capture all the existing router configurations before performing the upgrade, and reapply all those configuration to the new firmware after the upgrade.

This includes the login and password to the router will be reset to "admin" user with "admin" password, and its IP address reset to 192.168.0.1.

I have tried doing a configuration backup of the old firmware before the upgrade, and restore the backup to the new firmware. This will not work, because you can't login using your previous login and password, probably due to the change in login mechanism.

Auspicious dates for renovation in 2016

Here is the list of auspicious dates for renovation in year 2016, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu. (Click the image to enlarge)

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Auspicious dates for opening business in 2016

Here is the list of auspicious dates for opening business in year 2016, which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.

It can be applied to new business opening, or reopening of business after a break/holiday. (Click the image to enlarge)

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.