Initially this was supposed to be a SD card mod for the Buffalo WHR-HP-54G but then after soldering the points and stuff, the SD card wasn’t detected by DD-WRT so I scrapped that plan and instead did a facelift for this router.

What you’ll need.

- A heatsink  + fan.
- Some materials to cut open the plastic housing.
- Soldering skills
- Whatever you think is needed.

First of all, crack open the case and get the hole fitted according to your heatsink. I used a Intel Celeron 533mhz cooling system for mine and I guess that is enough for this router since it can’t be overclocked. Its just to cool it down abit and perhaps, provide even better stability. My router turned scratchy after the cutting and drilling etc.. So I gave it a paint job. BLACK~ haha. Alright, get started. That’s the end of this guide. Yes. That’s it. Look at the pictures if you want to see more.

Ipoh has its 1st Pappa Rich now. Everyone is like zomg let’s check it out..
hahaha so I went over to this place with Jacqueline and guess what? This place is horrible! I don’t know whether its because of the huge CNY crowd or simply because of their failed strategy to maximize profit.

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1st failed thing.
There was a 30min queue to get a seat. Wow great.. a long queue of people outside but only 5 chairs available for customers to sit while waiting for their turn. Names were just scribbled on a piece of paper and when it is your turn, you get called. Simple as that. Some names were called but none showed up. I guess they’ve got tired of waiting. I actually had this idea of  acknowledging myself as the person being called when the guy did not turn up but then again… haha.. Ok nvm lets go on. So we managed to get a seat.. but it was outside pappa rich, an indoor corridor area with a couple of portable air coolers. Wow, air coolers.. sounds great.. but they weren’t even switched on!

2nd failed thing. Drinks.

Look at how pathetic those drinks were served. They weren’t even served at the correct person. They simply just placed it on the god damned oily table (but not oily anymore after Jac wiped it). The so called CARROT juice didn’t look like carrot juice. Looks like some antibiotic mixture added with loads of water in it. Why serve it in a “huge” mug like this if they are not even gonna fill it up to the brim? hmm.. then notice the amount of ice cubes in it? ZOMG. Probably the so called carrot juice was only filled up to 1/4 of the cup and the rest were just ice. Oh did you just spot the dirt on the handles? If I’m not mistaken this place was up for business only not too long ago. Did you guys use recycled cups? Or you did not wash the cups… urgh. Carrot juice.. looks like they used only a 1/4 carrot for this cup. And if you’re wondering about the price? Don’t ask. I could get you a packet of carrots from Jusco for that price.. LOL. I wonder how it tasted like.. the usual carrot juice I always have doesn’t seem to be translucent or rather transparent~ . Hey  Jacq if you’re reading this, please do tell me how it tasted like. Hahaha.. Next!  The pappa cham! Ah, this looked abit better but I’d say its equally bad. I could make myself a better drink than this diluted thing. I’ve nothing much to say about this pappa cham but only one word can describe it. its really chammmm ( pronounce it the Cantonese way). *shakes head* tsk tsk tsk..

3rd barely passed thing.

The kaya toast. Hmm, kaya toast pretty much tastes the same though. The only thing that I wasn’t satisfied with this was the stale bread. The bread was dry and the sides of the bread was burnt. This is not the usual kinda koptiam style toast. Very special indeed.

A nbtd shot =P.

4th failed thing.

Oh wow, nice we have wifi provided here at Pappa Rich Ipoh. Jacqueline was able to stream her usual porno materials happily for a while but then suddenly, the connection dropped. Although we managed to get it back running, haih, sudah potong stim.. Then, the connection dropped again..  I switched the wifi on my cellphone to the TOS koptiam next to Pappa Rich and I’d managed to get a much more stable connection although it showed only 1 bar on the signal strength meter.

Managed to snap this before the connection dropped and she couldn’t enjoy her porno anymore~

5th failed thing.

A worker simply walks up to you and demands for payment.  I thought I should pay when I want to pay and not when you want me to pay. Anyway fine, I gave him the cash and patiently waited for my change. 5mins went by.. still no sign of my change.. 10mins.. then 15mins.. Fine, I’m lifting my heavy butt and I’ll personally walk to the cashier to demand for my change. He questioned me asking whether have I paid for my stuff. !@#@#%@#. Anyway I managed to squeeze my change out from his cash register and went back to my seat. Not too long after that, another worker came and requested for payment. I’m totally speechless. Settled the stuff, grabbed our stuff and went away.

Pappa Rich @ Ipoh was a total letdown.. I don’t know why there are still customers going there. Good feng shui perhaps? haha. Anyway I went there too!

One thing nice about De Gardens though was the lighting there.

This simple mod is mainly for people who feel that their router is getting a little too hot for comfort or maybe it keeps crashing. Most routers fail because of extreme casing temperatures and others fail because they simply lack ram capacity. If you are not experiencing any of these symptoms, just forget it. It won’t make your internet connection go faster or latency to drop. If you’re feeling a little paranoid about overheating routers etc, continue reading =).

What you’ll need.
- A Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS equivalent router
- An 8cm 12V fan ( you can get if from your casing fan / PSU fan or simply buy it )
- A little soldering and drilling skills.

-Get the router open and have a look at your router!
-Mark the position of the fan and get your drill ready.
-Drill the holes. I’ve added extra vents at the side to ease airflow.

- It ain’t easy to get the holes made for me.. I seldom drill stuff haha. Anyway make sure that you’ve drilled the holes for the screws to secure the fan in place and also for the wires to go through. Don’t bother much about the ugly edges because the fan would be covering it later on.

-Then, solder the fan wires according to the picture above. Alright, I know this isn’t the perfect soldering but bigger is better right? =P As long as it doesn’t touch the other pins.

-Here’s the naked Broadcom BCM5352 processor and ram chips of the router. If you’d like a better performance cooling, you’d be better off slapping on a few heatsinks on the processor, memory chips and the radio chip on top of the active cooling by the fan. I did not have my thermal grease with me so I skipped that step.

Fix everything back together and there you have it, an active cooling system for the Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS. Let’s simply overclock the processor from 200mhz to 250mhz.

No problems at all. Pushing the radio power a little higher wouldn’t hurt this baby either.

If you would like to have some control on the fan speed, just add in a variable resistor in the circuit. Adding a switch would also be nice as the sound from the fan gets quite annoying at times. I’m considering to add some diodes and the switch after a few hours running. You could even add led lights, thermal sensors to adjust the fan speed according to the case temperature.. But well, this is the simplest fool proof method to add a fan to the router. It looks pretty good too!

AP Ayam Penyet Ipoh has finally landed in Ipoh. I remember snapping some photos about Ayam Penyet in Sunway Pyramid but somehow I’ve misplaced the photos..

Here’s the one in Ipoh. There wasn’t any customers in this branch though.. pity pity.. I wonder how long will this shop last. There’s the Pappa Rich Ipoh located next to it too. I’ve yet to try that out yet but I heard that the service is really bad compared to the other branches in KL.

Its a new year! Time to get busy and gobble down some oranges while pocketing those lovely ang paus.

Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Woo, the Xperia X1 runs ubuntu too!  Grabbed the link from the guys at Xperiod and got it running on the xperia and here are the screenies~ . Haha. Nothing spectacular… anyway, gong xi fa cai =).

Its a 1.2Gb thing and pretty much useless at this point of time.

Here’s another contender in the plastic skin protection industry. GadgetShieldz. Its supposed to be “again” the same material used in other brands like InvisbleSh*eld and BestSk*nsEver. However GadgetShieldz promises a lower price compared to the other two brands and after browsing their website, it really does turn out to be cheaper with its free shipping worldwide.

Well, does this product really live up to its ” cheap but same quality as the more expensive brands” standard? Hmm.. yes and no.

YES / PROS

1. GadgetShieldz gives an almost perfect cut on the skin letting very little of the phone surface exposed.

2. GadgetShieldz offers a more variety of skins, ( more than the BSE but rather the same or less than IS). They didn’t have the skin for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 on the BSE but they did have them on the IS site with a much much higher price.

3. GadgetShieldz comes with free worldwide shipping via courier.

4. Like the others, it does give some scratch protection.

5. It’s reasonably priced.

Here’s how the screen protector look like once it is applied on the screen. Pretty nice almost-perfect cut.

NO/CONS 

1. Some of the skins arrive with a little scratches on them already. One of the review units had a pretty long but fine scratch on it.

2. The skin magically turns black / oil-mark stain if too much pressure is applied on it after some time. I had a few cases of this happening already. Even though I was given the replacement for the skin, this phenomena repeated. Shame on you GadgetShieldz.

Anyway, I was told that this phenomena does not happen on every skin. Probably the batch that I received had some problems during manufacturing.

Left: A new piece of GadgetShieldz. Right: The “oil-stained” GadgetShieldz.

Verdict: The only reason I’m using GadgetShieldz currently is because they have the full body protection for my SE Xperia X1. Otherwise, I’ll rather spend a little more and get the BSE instead. Although that skin costs a little, yes a little only bit more, it would save the hassle of replacing the “oil-stained” skin from GadgetShieldz.  Anyway, if you’d like to get some GadgetShieldz for your devices and keep them scratch free thoughout their lifespan, I’m selling them too here. Oh yes I know that contradicts my sentence above.. but oh well.. as I said, it only happens on some skins and it can be replaced for free.

Thanks to GadgetShieldz for the skins =) .