Discus enthusiats at the Fish forum is running a contest on The Best Discus Gallery for the month of September 2005. Read the following thread for more information
http://www.myfishforum.com/threadnav2371-1-10.html
You are welcoem to join the contest
The race at SPA over the weekend has been a wet one for all team. The races move slowly but look surely to have a 1-2 finish by Mc Laren. Their first in 5 years. After the 2nd pit stop, Raikkonen managed to pass Montoya to take the lead. The Finn was running extremely fast and consistently running at 3 seconds a lap faster than Montoya and Alonso. With only 3 laps away from finish, A Pizzonia of William took Montoya out of the race while trying to unlap himself. An incident stunned Mc Laren fan like as well as Ron Dennis. At about 4 laps from the finish, Klien of Red Bull racing tried to pass Alonso and the F1 commentator was saying that if Alonso did not handle the situation carefully, Klien may take Alonso out of the race. Just minutes later, it happened to Montoya.
Bad lucks has plague Mc Laren for years. Just a few races ago, Raikkonen blew his tire with just a few laps from victory. Years back, Hakkinen has a clutch problem with just two corners away from finish at the last lap of Spain GP.
Even though it is not Montoya fault, should Montoya move slight faster, A Pizzonia should not have any chance to close the gap and take him out. Obviously Montoya has been trying to run a controlled race like what Alonso is doing.
The result after this race is
Drivers’ Standings
Pos Driver Points
1 F Alonso (Spa) 111
2 K Raikkonen (Fin) 86
3 M Schumacher (Ger) 55
4 JP Montoya (Col) 50
5 J Trulli (Ita) 43
6 G Fisichella (Ita) 41
7 R Schumacher (Ger) 37
8 R Barrichello (Bra) 35
9 J Button (GB) 30
10 M Webber (Aus) 29
11 N Heidfeld (Ger) 28
12 D Coulthard (GB) 21
13 J Villeneuve (Can) 9
14 F Massa (Bra) 8
15 T Monteiro (Por) 7
16 A Wurz (Aut) 6
17= N Karthikeyan (Ind) 5
17= C Klien (Aut) 5
19= C Albers (Hol) 4
19= P de la Rosa (Spa) 4
21 P Friesacher (Aut) 3
22 A Pizzonia (Bra) 2
23= T Sato (Jap) 1
23= V Liuzzi (Ita) 1
Constructor Standings
Pos Team Points
1 Renault 152
2 McLaren 146
3 Ferrari 90
4 Toyota 80
5 BMW-Williams 59
7 BAR 31
6 Red Bull 27
8 Sauber 17
9 Jordan 12
10 Minardi 7
Constructor Championship should be within reach of McLaren but the Driver Championship should go to Alonso without doubt.
The auctioneer said it plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock for the Web communications company. It would make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion by 2008 or 2009 if financial targets are met, giving the deal a total value of up to $4.1 billion, executives of the two companies said.
Honda announced recently a new airbag system for motorcycle as shown Here. The airbag will however only installed on high end motorcycle with large cc but it is one important step taken to increase the safety of the motorcyclist.
Remember that airbags are only featured in high car some 10 years ago. Even the Audi that I drove then has only one air bag. Today, most continental car are installed with 6 air bags and some even has 10 air bags in them. Car that we drive these days are much safer and surely motorcycle is moving in similar direction.
With European anti-tobacco laws came into force last month, McLaren lost their title sponsor West and instead, they have announced that Hilton will be one of their main sponsor. Hence we will begin to see Hilton logo instead of West in McLaren Mercedes car in this weekend race.
C hecking out my koi pond today found that the pond water clear up further. I am now able to see the base of the 5 feet deep pond very clearly. This is an indication that the bio filter of the Vortex has kicked in. From this point onwards, I will increase feeding and consistantly feed 3 kg of koi food daily to my koi for the next few weeks and monitor the water quality regularly. We shall see if the Vortex is able to cope with this load.
Mc Laren Mercedes blew again at Monza and that really spoiled Raikkonen hope of title chase. As a result, the driver champion now is surely belong to Alonso who is now 27 points ahead of Raikkonen with only 4 more races to go.
Firstly, the engine failure during practise set Raikkonen 10 grid back at starting line. By starting at 11th position cost Raikkonen more than 30 second behind Alonso during the window of the first pit stop. When Raikkonen pit for the first time, a lot of fuel went into his car to make him race to finish with only one pit stop and this look extremely promising. But before long, Raikkonen was called in again for a tire replacement which cost him another 30 seconds.
Montoya who was leading the race also suffer some tire problem during final few laps but he was lucky to finish the race to take the chequed flag. As Michelin tire works well in other Michellion Teams, the tire failure must be due to the suspension setup problem as highlighted by Alonso later.
Mc Laren no doubt has the quickest car at this moment but they simply lack reliability. Renault on the hand simply going to win driver championship on reliability of the car.
Montoyo vowed to help Raikkonen to win remaining races but it is now a little bit to late and there is no way Raikkonen can win the driver title unless Alonso crash out of the remaining three races. That look quite impossible of course.
As a McLaren fan, all I can do is wait for another year to see if Raikkonen can take the title again for Mc Laren.
Drivers’ Standings
Pos Driver Points
1 F Alonso (Spa) 103
2 K Raikkonen (Fin) 76
3 M Schumacher (Ger) 55
4 JP Montoya (Col) 50
5 J Trulli (Ita) 43
6 G Fisichella (Ita) 41
7 R Schumacher (Ger) 35
8 R Barrichello (Bra) 31
9 N Heidfeld (Ger) 28
10= M Webber (Aus) 24
10= J Button (GB) 24
12 D Coulthard (GB) 21
13 F Massa (Bra) 8
14= T Monteiro (Por) 6
14= A Wurz (Aut) 6
14= J Villeneuve (Can) 6
17= N Karthikeyan (Ind) 5
17= C Klien (Aut) 5
19= C Albers (Hol) 4
19= P de la Rosa (Spa) 4
21 P Friesacher (Aut) 3
22 A Pizzonia (Bra) 2
23= T Sato (Jap) 1
23= V Liuzzi (Ita) 1
Constructor Standings
Pos Team Points
1 Renault 144
2 McLaren 136
3 Ferrari 86
4 Toyota 78
5 BMW-Williams 54
6 Red Bull 27
7 BAR 25
8 Sauber 14
9 Jordan 11
10 Minardi 7
Apple iPod 20GB is a good MP3 Player as far I am concern. For once , I am able to store all the songs, sone 3000 of them, in my CD collection to a single iPod. Song from those from the 80’s and current pop song can be retrieve from the iPod with ease. The iPod also made CD changer in my car obsolete. In my earlier car, I used to transmit the song to my car audio system via a casettte adapter.
The audio system of my the other car Volve S80 however come without a cassette player and I am forced to look for a FM Transmitter. Look around and finally got hold of the Griffin FM Transmitter. Configuration and setting of frequency through the playlist is a bit tricky but the worst set back is the poor sound quality it transmitted when the car is moving. With such set back, I finally stop using the Griffin Transmitter in my car and instead I used it now at home to transmit the song to my FM Receiver. By placing the transmitter close to the receiver, the sound quality is infact good enough.
Griffin recent launched the new FM Transmitter that some with LCD screen and a knob for setting the desire frequency. Read more at
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itriplcd/index.php. Setting of frequency is no doubt become much easier but yet to check our the sound quality it offers.
My unit of Griffin FM Transmitter was purchased at a price of RM 199.00.
Tekkeon Road Warrier is another FM transmitter which can be consider but the price tag is well in excess of RM 400. I was told that Roas Warrier, as the name implied, is a better option for transmitting song from iPod to the audio receiver in car.
With 10 tons pond running on two Vortex Chambers, the pond water finally clearing up today. The filter has been running over a period of more than one month. The bacteria in the bio chamber appear to be matured. The next thing to do is to monitor the nitrate level in the pond water. Very soon, I will have to re commission the original underground filter so that I can restart my Trickle Filter which has been idling for the same period of time. Hence, the Vortex is working well.
The K9 Trekkers
were at Fraser Hill recently. A group of us travel up to Fraser Hill on Saturday morning leaving Kuala Lumpur at 9:00am and reached GAP at 11:00am. We travelled along North South Express and exited at Taman Malim and then head south to Kuala Kubu Baru. The road from KKB to GAP is extremely winding and quite tough for some of people as well as their furkids. Jody, my pug and my daughter Doreen were with us to Fraser Hill. We reach The Smoke House where we put up a night at Fraser Hill. The K9 Trekkers took up all the 14 rooms available and really enjoyed the 2 days one night stay. The weather has been extremely good and cooling. On 2nd day at Fraser Hill, we attempt the Jungle Trek with a guide. Some of the pictures taken are as below :-
The Smoke House were kind enough to allow our dogs to stay with us in the resort room. We too are very happy that our team of K9 Trekkers were very discipline and responsible and all our furkids did not contributed any inconvenience to others during our visit.
Lunch and dinner at The Smoke House were enjoying. After our dinner, we proceeded with our AA session with tons of alcohol. Breakfast on 2nd day was similarly fantastic.
More pictures are as follow :-
We left Fraser Hill at 2:00pm on second day as the gate open on even hours. Going downhill was much more comfortable than going up and all passengers managed a nice sleep on the way back to Kuala Lumpur. More pictures are as follow:-
Furkids that made to the trek includes Pug, Miniature Pincher, Chi Hua Hua, Golden Retriever, Beagle, Mongrel, …
Raikkonen suffered another engine failure today during practise. Does that sound familiar ? Yes indeed. Each time when Mc Laren catch up slightly with rival Renault, some technical issue will surface and that will like make Raikkonen slip back slightly again. Two previous incidents make Raikkonen demoted 10 grid positions and he managed to finish 2nd and 3rd place behind rival Alonso for those two races. If Alonso starts well tomorrow, then it is likely the gap between Alonso and Raikkonen will widen up. Ron Dennis maintain that Raikkonen can still win tomorrow, that is possible but difficult. Anyway the race tomorrow will be interesting and let enjoy !
The two Vortex filter that I have installed for my Koi Pond has been working for a few weeks now. I am now testing the Vortex by turning off my existing filter to see if those two Vortex is able to cope with my 10 tons pond. Water has cleared up slightly but remain greenish. I shall allow the vortex to mature over a period of longer time, possible three month before making any conclusion.
Feeding amount is minimal and will slowly increase back to normal level when the bio filter mature. Will post the result soon.
Cheers
After the last Discus craze, I am now back again with a new Discus tank. This time, no intention to breed the discus again as I have achieved and managed to breed discus several times years ago. In a 2 feet tank, I am now keeping four juvenile Discus. Two Red Melon and two young discus. Pictures of the Red Melon are as below :-
Installed Google shortly it was announced on news.com. Immediately tested with some of the IT savvy friends and found that Google Talk voice quality is as good as Skype. One major different between Google Talk and Skype is the Skype has the Skype out feature that allow you to call any fixed line or mobile number at extremely economical rate.
Google Talk can be downloaded at http://www.google.com/talk/
As I used Gmail a lot these days, I found that using Google Talk and Gmail together extremely handy.
Finally the Constructor Title of the current Formula 1 season is within the reach of Mc Laren Team. With only 9 points behind that of Renault and with the current form, Mc Laren will have no problem to catch up and lift the Constructor within the next few races.
As for the Driver title, the pictures look rather different. Raikkonen is currently trailing 24 points at second place and to catch up with Alonso, the title leader is definitely an uphill task. It now depend on whether Alonso will bring any cheers to the Mc Laren camp by having one or two non finishes. Renault car has been very reliable when compared to Mc Laren this season. Even if Alonso finish 3rd in all remaining races and Raikkonen win all the remaining races, he will still win the driver title. Mathematically, it still bring some hope but we will have to face the fact that Alonso will be the eventual champion. Not to my liking that that will the result. Guess I will have to wait for another year and hopefully Mc Laren will still be able to maintain the advantage that they are enjoying now.
Drivers’ Standings
Pos Driver Points
1 F Alonso (Spa) 95
2 K Raikkonen (Fin) 71
3 M Schumacher (Ger) 55
4 JP Montoya (Col) 40
5 J Trulli (Ita) 39
6 G Fisichella (Ita) 35
7 R Schumacher (Ger) 32
8 R Barrichello (Bra) 31
9 N Heidfeld (Ger) 28
10 M Webber (Aus) 24
11 J Button (GB) 23
12 D Coulthard (GB) 21
13 F Massa (Bra) 8
14= T Monteiro (Por) 6
14= A Wurz (Aut) 6
14= J Villeneuve (Can) 6
17= N Karthikeyan (Ind) 5
17= C Klien (Aut) 5
19= C Albers (Hol) 4
19= P de la Rosa (Spa) 4
21 P Friesacher (Aut) 3
22= T Sato (Jap) 1
22= V Liuzzi (Ita) 1
Constructor Standings
Pos Team Points
1 Renault 130
2 McLaren 121
3 Ferrari 86
4 Toyota 71
5 BMW-Williams 52
6 Red Bull 27
7 BAR 24
8 Sauber 14
9 Jordan 11
10 Minardi 7