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Travel

Applying for Malaysia Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP)

by Ben
written by Ben

If you have been driving to Malaysia a lot, you would have noticed on “VEP” stand board everywhere at the malaysia custom. I am sharing my experience in applying VEP in this post.

VEP is a permit issued by the Malaysia for foreign vehicle (aka Singapore Car) to enter to Malaysia. As of Apr 2019, it is not mandatory to have VEP to enter Malaysia and nobody will stop you from entering Malaysia if you do not have VEP. However, it is a matter of time and when they will enforce this rules in the future. Hence, if you have some free time and often drive to Malaysia, you may want to apply it earlier.

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Thoughts

3th Theme Updates Since 2005!

by Ben
written by Ben

This is my 3th theme updates since 2005! i just realised i have been with this domain name for the last 14 years!

The last updates was 9 Nov 2013 and it was using theme re-doable. Still, it was 6 years since the last 2nd theme updates.

As i have some free time recently, i decided to update my wordpress theme to Donovan by ThemeZee

Stay tuned on this website as i will be posting more posts on product, services reviews or travel blog.

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symfony

Mixing YML and Annotation

by Ben
written by Ben 
Uncaught PHP Exception Doctrine\Common\Persistence\Mapping\MappingException: "No mapping file found named 'G:\Websites\hostphotocontest\hostphotocontest_site_sym2\Symfony\path\src\Entro\HpcBundle\Resources\config\doctrine/Contest.orm.yml' for class 'Entro\HpcBundle\Entity\Contest'." at G:\Websites\hostphotocontest\hostphotocontest_site_sym2\Symfony\path\vendor\doctrine\common\lib\Doctrine\Common\Persistence\Mapping\MappingException.php line 75 {"exception":"[object] 

(Doctrine\\Common\\Persistence\\Mapping\\MappingException: No mapping file found named 'G:\\Websites\\hostphotocontest\\hostphotocontest_site_sym2\\Symfony\\path\\src\\Entro\\HpcBundle\\Resources\\config\\doctrine/Contest.orm.yml' for class 'Entro\\HpcBundle\\Entity\\Contest'. at G:\\Websites\\hostphotocontest\\hostphotocontest_site_sym2\\Symfony\\path\\vendor\\doctrine\\common\\lib\\Doctrine\\Common\\Persistence\\Mapping\\MappingException.php:75)"}

doctrine:

orm:
auto_generate_proxy_classes: "%kernel.debug%"

default_entity_manager: default
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apache

Block bad bots

by Ben
written by Ben

Recently my website has been crawling to a stop with 508 errors.

And then i realised there’s a stupid bot keep crawling my website non-stop

And that stupid bot is called ‘Semrush’ and below is the access log entry

46.229.168.68 - - [05/Dec/2016:16:07:55 +0800] "GET /xyz.html HTTP/1.1" 301 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; SemrushBot/1.1~bl; +http://www.semrush.com/bot.html)"

And to block this bot all you have to do is to add the following entries to your .htaccess file

BrowserMatchNoCase Semrush bad_bot

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from env=bad_bot

deny from 46.229.164.
deny from 46.229.168.

The above codes will block both browser agent and as well as IP address

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Reviews

My New TV! Samsung Curved UHD TV UA65HU7200K Review Part 1

by Ben
written by Ben

After few weeks of hesitation and countless visits to Best Denki, Expo and Havey Norman, I finally jumped into the curved TV trend in Dec 2014.

I rarely do review in my website as I know that there are countless review of other things that i have but for this TV model – there is not much review as it is quite new in the market.

I am not a professional TV reviewer so please do not take my review seriously. The feedbacks i provide here are basically from a normal consumer POV.

I will split this into several parts but before i start the actual TV model review, let me talk about curved TV in general.

Curved TV?

I did some research on curved TV before I bought this model and this is what others would think

  • If your screen size is 65 inch and below – you will not benefit from the curved TV.
  • You need to sit directly in front of the TV to benefit the ‘immersion’ of curved TV.
  • People sitting at the side will get disoriented viewing
  • Curved TV looks like shit if mount on TV

And below is what I thought after watching the TV for hours 1 month after i bought the TV

You barely noticed any difference if you sit in front or at the side of your sofa.

Trust me. After few hours of viewing, you dont feel any difference of the curved TV either

…sitting directly in front of it (However, if you observe carefully, the scoreboard is slightly curved)

IMG_4221 copy

 

 

or sitting at the side

IMG_4227

 

Did you see any reflection for the above 2 pictures?  Yes but not that much.

 

Curved TV does looks awkward when mounting on wall.

Not sure about your setup but my curved TV is ‘surrounded’ by my side cabinets and hence it does not look weird in my living room.

However, if you view it from the side, it does take up some space (approx 10-15cm) after mounting it to the wall.

IMG_4217

 

And this is the allowance left for you to plug in the cables

 

I will stop my review here and will post more feedbacks next month as I will be going for a long holiday.

In the meantime, feel free to post anything that you wish to find out about curved TV or this samsung TV series and I will glad to cover that area as well.

 

 

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Networking

Using D-Link 865L as AC wireless access point for Asus RT-N66U

by Ben
written by Ben

I got a superb wireless router which i bought 2-3 years back and it is Asus RT-N66U.
I recently switch to another ISP which gave me Dlink 865L wireless router but I really want to use my RTN66U as my default router.

I occasionally do some internal file transfer between my computer and my NAS and i hit the speed limit of the aging 5ghz wireless N band.

RTN66U doesnt support wireless AC but DLink 865L does.
So why not use 865L solely for AC band while using RTN66U for the b/g/n band?

This tutorial will teach you how to extend your existing router and use Dlink 865L (or other dlink routers i believe) purely for wireless AC.

First of all, connect your laptop/computer to the Dlink router only and do the following first:-

1. Disable UPNP.
Go to Advanced -> Advanced Network and uncheck ‘Enabled UPNP IGD’ or similar options

advanced-network

2. Disable wireless N and only enable AC band (optional if you still want to use dlink wireless features).
Under SETUP-> Wireless Settings -> Manual setup, disabled 2.4GHz Band and enable 5GHz Band. Set 802.11 Mode = Mixed 802.11ac. For my configuration, i select channel 44 as it is less congested in my area.

wireless-network

 

3. Disable DHCP server.
Go to SETUP -> Network Settings and unchecked DHCP Server option.

network-settings

4. Update your Dlink router IP Address and set it as part of the network with your default router.

[See above screenshot]

My Asus RTN66U network configuration is as below.
IP Address: 192.168.1.1
Subnet: 255.255.254.0

Hence, i configure my dlink as:-
IP Address: 192.168.1.2
Subnet: 255.255.254.0

Configure IP address and subnet by going to Setup->Network Settings page.

5. Once you done the above, connect your dlink router (LAN port) to your default router LAN port. Note that you should connect dlink’s LAN port to your router LAN port. You should not connect to your dlink WAN port.

6. Reboot dlink and it is done.

Bonus: You can also use the other 3 LAN ports in your dlink router for other devices as well. Hence, saving the need to buy additional switch

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Codingsymfony

Migrating Symfony1 to Symfony2: Weekend 1

by Ben
written by Ben

Before i start, i am not a Symfony pro.

I have a day job and i am updating my website on my freetime (usually on the weekends).

Its been 2-3 years ever since i last update my other website.

Hence, this timeblog is not really for experts looking for answer here but more of keeping a record of how i update the framework so that i do not need to ‘re’-read the whole cookbook/tutorial again.

I hope you may find some useful information from my blog here. If do, please drop some comments here.

…

Read the overview and tutorial briefly from symfony website and its time to install one clean copy in my development machine

Installed latest XAMPP

And the composer

And as per Symfony’s instruction, enter

composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition path/ "2.5.*"

to install symfony framework to your machine.

Next, add the virtual host to your apache and get it started


<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8000>
ServerName www.hostphotocontest.com.localhost

DocumentRoot "G:/Websites/hostphotocontest/hostphotocontest_site_sym2/Symfony/path/web"
<Directory "G:/Websites/hostphotocontest/hostphotocontest_site_sym2/Symfony/path/web">
# enable the .htaccess rewrites
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>

ErrorLog "D:/xampp/apache/logs/project_error.log"
CustomLog "D:/xampp/apache/logs/project_access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

Make sure the website(e.g www.hostphotocontest.com.localhost) is added to your hosts file so that when u load www.hostphotocontest.com.localhost in your local browser, it is actually calling apache 127.0.0.1 to load the symfony

OK. Website loaded but it keep showing error.
Right. Production is not setup yet. I need to load DEV environment instead.

Hence, i load http://www.hostphotocontest.com.localhost:8000/app_dev.php/ in my browser instead (read ‘app_dev.php’).

Website loaded. Installation is good.

And i spend the rest of the weekend in re-designing my website with bootstrap.

End of Weekend 1

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Codingsymfony

Symfony 1 to Symfony 2

by Ben
written by Ben

Finally have some time to update one of my personal website (http://www.hostpohotocontest.com) from Symfony 1 to Symfony 2 framework.

Below are the noticeable differences i encounter when migrating to Symfony 1 to 2.

I will update this list from time to time whenever i have the time and energy to do so.

The Good

  • The concept of the framework is similar to Symfony 2.
  • Unlike Symfony1, which multiple applications (e.g. frontend and backend) using the one single framework API, everything in Symfony 2 is bundles. The frontend twig, is a bundle, the framework is a bundle.
  • There is no ‘plugin’ concept. Everything is a bundle.
  • Twig looks good. Write lesser code for view layer.
  • Most of the generator are still available in Symfony 1
  • Composer makes installing third party bundles easy!
  • Want to overwrite or extend third party’s controller without updating their codes directly? Yes it can be done easily in Symfony 2. This is good in the sense that if you update third party bundles, you can be assured that your own ‘manual override’ codes still remain intact.

The Bad

  • sfguard is not available in Symfony2. Yes. its a nightmare to migrate this over, especially that the encyrption implemented in symfony 2 is different.
    • I found a a replacement of sfguard = FOSUserBundle bundle. Will update my progress on this along the way
  • If you are using timestampable fields like me (i.e created_at, updated_at, deleted_at), these features does not come with Symfony2 by default, you need to install a DoctrineExtension bundle from STOF

The Ugly

  • You need to re-code everything over. The directory structure and the codes are totally different in Symfony 2.

And… I will keep track of the weekends i spent on re-writing my codes over.

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