Interloper View

One struggle for new bloggers is to find a topic. This is especially true for those who want to write and submit articles to blog to earn money. Here are some suggestions to help address this challenge. image © Adrian van Leen for openphoto.net CC:PublicDomain Movies Have you seen a movie lately? If you have, why not write a review about the movie? Discuss the story line, what was good about the movie, what was bad about the movie? Did you go to the movie with your children or friends, if you did then share their comments or reactions to the movie? Was there anything memorable about the movie? Maybe there were some questions that others might be interested in such as did the movie contains nudity. Some of the movie reviews were on movies I recently watched such as Ted , Looper (a movie with Bruce Willis) and Skyfall (the latest Bond movie). Instead of movies, you could also write about television series, especially new series that has just been released like Last Resort

I previously reviewed the different credit cards that are available in Malaysia and ways to get money back from these cards. A lot has changed since my last review. I have not really gone back to do an in depth analysis. The baseline at the moment for value based on either cash back or prize redemption is 0.5%. The service tax by the Malaysian government adds an additional RM50 per principal card and RM25 per supplementary card.each year. image ©  Adrian van Leen  for  openphoto.net  CC:PublicDomain  Due to the competition in the market, most annual fees are waived. The only exception I found is the Citibank Cashback card. When you first sign up for the card, the annual fee for the first two years are waived. However, when I asked for a waiver, they refused. Instead of approving a waiver, they offered a different card. The other option from them was to sign up for an additional service from them for another year waiver. I refused either option and was billed RM625. I cancelled

Have you ever thought of doing something but did not really know where to start or how to start? There is a simple solution, just go ahead and do it. The result really does not matter, what matters is that you get your practical experience. image © Jasenka Petanjek for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike  Start a little experiment - a proof of concept. This is done daily in companies all over the world so why not do it in our personal lives? The key factor about proof of concept to do it on a small scale with minimal risk. Before you start your proof of concept, you should have some idea about what it is you want to find out. The preparations can be something as simple as reading what other have done in that area. For example, you are thinking of starting a blog. Read about your options, there are free hosting sites and there are sites that require payment. There are some articles which talk about the essential steps to starting a blog. Just to experience it you might

When it comes to providing feed into this site for my other writing sites, a rss feed is required. The same applies if you want to automatically publish your articles on Facebook (via NetworkedBlogs). image © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike Some sites make it easy for you. The following are the rss for the sites I write for. Note that in each case, strovek is my username, if you need it for your own user name, just replace it strovek with your username for the site.   Triond        http://www.triond.com/feed/user/pen_name/strovek ExpertsPages    http://expertspages.com/author/strovek/feed Bukisa    http://www.bukisa.com/rss/author/Strovek Wikinut    http://www.wikinut.com/arss~sohnm/Strovek/rss.xml  Blogger (using this site as a sample)   http://interloperview.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss      or   http://interloperview. blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default I was not able to find the url to obtain the rss feed

There are different reasons for writing online. When I started writing online it was to share my knowledge and experience with my team. I was a programmer managing a group of other programmers. image © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike The blog served a couple of purposes: share some of the tricks I used on some of my projects. set up a standard (comments, error handling guide). a place for me to bookmark solutions or tips I found previously. After that I found that it was earn some spare change by writing and created a few other blogs. The challenge I found in was to get the word out about my writing. My early success was to participate in forums. One such entry garnered 1000 over hits but it only lasted one day and dropped as fast. I have since started participating in other article directory sites like wikinut bukisa Triond Squidoo ExpertsColumn It is much easier to earn money with these sites since the traffic (from all

The 10 scrolls from Og Mandino's book can be found here .

This was shared with me in Google Plus.  Very touching. When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value. Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions, They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital. One nurse took her copy to Melbourne .. The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editions of magazines around the country and appearing in mags for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem. And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this 'anonymous' poem winging across the Internet. Cranky Old Man..... What do you see nurses? . . .. . .What do you see? What are you thinking .. . when you're looking at me? A cranky old man, . . . . . .n

1. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – In other words, don’t settle for anything less than amazing work for yourself and for others. When people see that you expect greatness, they will give you what you expect. The same goes for investing, you will never go wrong with buying excellent companies. 2. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – When you are wrong, stop what you are doing, admit your mistakes, cut your losses short, and move on. This will prove to be valuable in investing as well as in life and in business. 3. “Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” – Simply put, no one can say no to great. If you want to live a life that matters, do great work. If you want a portfolio that kicks ass, put in your research and buy great companies. Y

 A friend shared this with me more than a year ago, I thought I would place it here to share it with others. Inspirational ! SHARE IT WITH CHILDREN Power of Money, By Adam Khoo ( Singapore 's youngest millionaire at 26 yrs.) Some of you may already know that I travel around the region pretty frequently, having to visit and conduct seminars at my offices in Malaysia , Indonesia , Thailand and Suzhou ( China ). I am in the airport almost every other week so I get to bump into many people who have attended my seminars or have read my books. Recently, someone came up to me on a plane to KL and looked rather shocked.He asked, 'How come a millionaire like you is traveling economy?' My reply was, 'That's why I am a millionaire. ' He still looked pretty confused. This again confirms that greatest lie ever told about wealth(which I wrote about in my latest book 'Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires' ). Many people have been brainwashed to think that mill

A few thing presentation ideas from Steve Jobs: He hardly ever looks back at the presentation. There are hardly any words on the slides, leave alone lengthy bullet points. Even when he's sharing the financial results of the company (in the beginning), he makes them fun to listen to. He is driving the presentation, not the other way around. He's delivering the message, and the slides are giving the added impact to his message.   His words are in absolute sync with the slides. There are no useless headers, footers or logos on every slide, that we often use on ours. It gives that extra space, flexibility and freshness to every slide. You can hardly notice the remote controller in his hand. There are no other visible gadgeteries on him, distracting the audience.   He's so relaxed and calm, and that makes the audience comfortable and receptive to his message. He's so focused on the message. Not even once did he stray from the topic. He's unbelievably well fa

This is an interesting article on how to ensure misery in Life.   In case you wonder why I bother to bookmark this page , it is because it is funny and by one of the greatest investor of our time - Charlie Munger.

These quotes were taken from the following site . “We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.”   ―   Charles T. Munger “We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.”   ―   Charles T. Munger “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren(Buffett) reads -- at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out".”   ―   Charles T. Munger ,   Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger The following is taken from another source : “SOME OF THE MOST ADMIRED PEOPLE IN FINANCE—INCL

It is a pretty interesting speech by Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway .   The text of the speech can be found here . The table of content is as follow: TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction by Rajnish Mehra ...................................................................................................... 1 Munger’s Opening Remarks:......................................................................................................... 1 Non-use of Efficient Market Theory at Berkshire ............................................................. 2 Personal Multidisciplinary Education................................................................................ 3 The Obvious Strengths of Academic Economics .............................................................. 4 What’s Wrong with Economics......................................................................................... 5 1) Fatal Unconnectedness, Leading To “Man With A Hammer Syndrome,” Often Causing Overweigh

The article, published in Obesity Reviews (Vol. 13 Issue 6), explained that cardio doesn't work for FOUR reasons : a) Some people eat more when they start a cardio program b) Calorie burning at rest often decreases with cardio c) Calorie-burning lean tissue is often lost d) Cardio programs cause you to do less activity over the day

While looking for information on "Blink", I came across this website which analyzes a few of the books by the author.  The website is http://www.gladwell.com Discussion on: The Dog Outlier Blink The Tipping point

When doing crossword, we sometimes have a fixed number of spaces and have specific words in between. This web site will help. The tip provided on how to use it is as follow: Use a hyphen (dash) to give the location of a missing letter: w-rd or -are Use an asterisk (star) for any number of unknown letters: lett* or *gry or ar*ct Exclude words containing the letters that follow a caret (hat): ma-e ^kt Or enter a few letters (without hyphens or asterisks) to see if they make any words.

If you have a scrambled word you need to unscramble here is a resource to help you do that.

I found the following article and thought it might be useful to share it here. What Every Voting Citizen Should Know The Voter Agent training recently conducted at the PJ Civic Centre brought to the fore some very critical issues which every voter ought to know. These are as follows: 1. As soon as you enter the polling station, you will be ushered to Kerani 1, who will check your personal identity against your NRIC.   He/she will then read out your name, NRIC number and the Siri/Bilangan number in accordance to the list provided by the Election Commission (SPR). 2. Once all that is verified, Kerani 1 will pass your NRIC to the next officer, Kerani 2. 3. Here, Kerani 2 will hand you a ‘Kertas Undi,’ which is identified by its Serial Number. As a voter, please know your rights. You have the constitutional right under our Election Laws to NOT accept the ‘Kertas Undi’ that the officer assigns to you. You CAN and should ask for a different ‘Kertas Undi’ from a different book.

This is from the following article . 1.  "Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one." 2.  "It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." 3.  "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." 4.  "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction." 5.  "Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs." 6.  "I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot." 7.  "I'm a big believer that as much as possible, and there's obviously political limitations, freedom of migration is a good thing." 8.  "If you can't make i

Lately as I look around, I noticed many interesting things but have missed it before.   Take example how lights dance in the wind: As the insects dance around the lights, you can see the  patterns  the insects make: It was also interesting, that the color of this picture somehow creates a different color effect in the photo. Even in the sky, we can see interesting design.  For example this eye in the sky:

Dong Zen Temple is a very popular place for photography and also for prayer. See the video below, towards you end you will find a surprise.  Best part about the place is the entrance is free. Also look at some of the photos taken from the temple surrounding. VIDEO0006 a video by strovek on Flickr. Location is found below: View Larger Map

Penang Government will be introducing a park and ride service for people staying in Prai and working on the Island.   This service will start on Mar 2011.  The commute will be from Seberang Jaya on the mainland to the factories in Bayan Lepas (including Sunshine in Bayan Baru). The free bus service will run 6am to 9am and from 4pm to 7pm on Mondays to Fridays. This is one of the Green initiatives of the Penang government as well as to help fight the increase in fuel prices.  This follows another initiative of no plastic bag for the supermarkets and fast food outlets.  This shows the political will of the local government to help save our environment and create greater awareness. Reference: http://relax-mind.blogspot.com/2011/01/free-bus-rides-for-penang-factory.html