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Try "Kinalas", A Bicolano Noodle Dish

This is an absolute 'must try' dish. Kinalas is a Bicolano dish, particularly in Naga City. But if you are nowhere near Bicol and want to try this tasty noodle soup, then you can try one at Doy's Kinalas Twin in Cabuyao Laguna. Click Here to visit there Facebook page.

What is Kinalas?

According to Wikipedia

Kinalas is a Bicol dish consisting of noodles (pancit) garnished by scraped meat from pork or beef's head and other parts, enhanced with a thick deep-brown sauce coming from the brains of a cow or pig. The dish is further flavored with spices (sili and pepper) and served in hot broth.



Link To Wiki Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinalas

The soup is very tasty, very beefy. It is garnished with tons of chicharon, sauted garlic, chunks of beef and boiled egg.

Fixin' Our Fridge

Hey what's up guys? You know we have this fridge that just stopped working around 5 years ago and we kinda just forgot about it. Then my mother just used it like a cabinet and placed some stuff in there.

Now, after all these years, I thought "OK, I'll take a look and see what's wrong".

So what's going on with the fridge?

• The compressor (motor) does not run
• Adjusting the thermostat doesn't do anything at all 
• Pressing the defrost button and turning the thermostat doesn't do anything too

Possible reasons?

• The start relay is busted
• The thermostat is busted
• The motor itself is busted

Troubleshooting:

I removed the start relay first and used my multimeter, set it to Ohms (resistance meter). With the test probes on the two terminals, I got a resistance reading of about 32.1 ohms, if it was busted then I would get an open circuit or O.L. on the meter. Ok, so the start relay is OK.

Next, I tested the motor. Testing the two winding, I got 23.4 ohms and 37.7 ohms, the motor is also OK, if it wasn't I would either get an open circuit reading or a shorted circuit (0 ohms).

Now, what's left is the thermostat. Still using the resistance meter, I tested the thermostat by placing the probes at the two terminals, this time, the meter read O.L. This tells me that the thermostat is busted, since its circuit is stuck open and no current will flow through it.

To make sure that the fridge's problem is just thermostat, I connected the start relay back to the motor and connected the wires that are supposed to be connected to the thermostat, allowing current to flow to the motor. Voila! The motor started and the fridge started to cool again.

Now I know that the thermostat is the problem, so I went out and bought a new one. This cost me around 450 PHP (around 8 USD). I connected the new thermostat, put everything back together and now the fridge is running fine again. Hooray! Saved a few bucks by doing it myself.

Analog Camera Buying Guide

So you want to try shooting with film or maybe you're like me who wants the nostalgia, the excitement that film shooting delivers.

Well before you go out buying an old film camera, you may want some tips on what to check before getting one for yourself.

Most people refer to the 35mm (135) film format when they're talking about film, although you can still get medium format and large format films and cameras. Films are quite rare and labs processing them are not as accessible as before, but film is making a comeback, it may not take over digital but the number of people who are going back to film are quite significant.

You will encounter rangefinders, to compact film cameras and SLR cameras, you way want to look up the differences, I won't be covering those in this article.

Here are some of tips when checking out an old film camera.

1.) Check the overall look of the camera, a few nicks and scratches are OK, just avoid really beat up cameras. If you are buying a camera body only, I suggest to bring a working lens to test the camera fully.

2.) Check the shutter curtain, some shutters are made of cloth but most that you'll find will be made of metal. It should be flawless, no dents, no bends, and it should be clean. Do not touch the shutter curtain!

Shutter curtain for Nikon F501

3.) Check the film pressure plate, it should be smooth, clean and it's spring loaded therefore should have some tension when you press on it. The pressure plate helps to keep the film flat when it's exposed.

4.) Foams or light seals should be intact and should not be falling apart, these can be found along the various places of the camera, usually on the film door.

5.) Check the shutter speed. Some shutters are mechanical and doesn't require batteries, while some are electronic and do require batteries. Try different shutter speeds, start with one second, press the shutter release and the time that the shutter opens and closes should be roughly one second. Try 1/100 and other faster shutter speeds, it should sound faster than the previous shutter speeds. You may not notice that much difference when the shutter is really fast already.

Take note that on cameras that supports DX films, like my Nikon F501, when the ISO dial is set to DX, the camera will not allow you to fire the shutter, because the camera lacks the ISO information to determine correct exposure, you need to switch to a different ISO setting just to enable the camera to fire the shutter.

6.) Optics. The camera should have clear optics, or at least should be clear enough for you. The viewfinder could get some dirt on the outside which usually can easily be cleaned by cotton swabs, the mirror on SLR camera can usually be cleaned easily as well.

7.) Consider the availability of batteries. Some old cameras uses obsolete battery types, while some uses standard AA or AAA batteries, like the Nikon F501. There are some battery mods for some cameras that uses obsolete batteries like the Yashica Electro 35.

8.) If the camera has AF (Autofocus) capability, do check if it is working accurately. AF-C mode should continuously focus on moving subjects, while AF-S should focus once on a subject when you half press the shutter release button. Likewise, AE-L and AF-L buttons should be working as well.

9.) If the cameras has DX pins, you will have to have an actual film roll loaded for you to test, if you have empty rolls or exposed DX rolls, you can try that to see if the DX contacts are working. DX film rolls provides the camera with what ISO rating that roll has.

DX pins on the film chamber

DX setting on the ISO dial

10.) Test the metering, if you're an experienced photographer, you should be able to determine if the metering makes sense or is close to the expected value. You could try using light meter apps on your phone, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of such apps.

11.) Finally do some research about the camera that you're considering to buy, if you can delay the purchase so that you can have enough time to research then do so, know what you are getting. Features will differ from camera to camera, others will auto film advance while other will have a manual film advance lever. Try to look for the camera's user manual on the internet, this will help you get more familiar on what you're getting and what more you need to check to make sure you're getting a good camera.

Trying Film Again

Apparently our old Yashica Electro 35 is nowhere to be found, so I bought a Nikon F501 (1986 model) for less than 2,000 PHP at a shop in Hidalgo. Everything works fine, from the AF, to metering, shutter etc., only thing left to do is load film. I gave the mirror, focusing screen and viewfinder a good clean, all is clear again.

So why film in this digital age? Nostalgia. I kinda miss the feeling of anticipation and excitement of what your images will look like, the waiting time. Also back then, I was only a kid and I couldn’t buy my own film rolls, so the only time I can take photos is when there are still some shots left on our camera. I admit that I only learned exposure and composition with digital cameras, instant results also mean you can correct your mistakes immediately, thus learning is faster. Now, I’ll be trying film again.

I’m very excited actually. I’m eager to shoot black and white film with this camera, but I would need filters for my lens first.

A bit more info about the camera:

It’s the first successful auto focus camera by Nikon
It has auto modes, Program auto and Aperture Priority, and of course Manual mode.
The camera has an auto film load system, just slide the film towards the marker near the spool, close the camera, press the shutter release button and the film loads to the first frame.
It can be powered by 4 x AA batteries or 4 x AAA batteries (using an adapter)
It can use DX film rolls to automatically set film speed
Film rewind is still manual though
Focusing system is TTL phase detection (yep, the same one used by modern DSLR, except this has only one zone)

Backup your backup!

I have a couple of friends whose external harddrives just died and with that also their years worth of data.

Why? Because they're consolidating all their data into this one external drive that they consider as "backup", great, and what happens when that drive fails? Single point of failure. You lose all your precious data.

Let me share what I personally do to keep my data safer. Redundancy, this is what I've learned from my years of experience in IT. Nothing beats data redundancy.

What I have at home are two external drives. One 1TB and one 2TB. My 1TB is my primary storage and the 2TB is the secondary.

Other PCs can do RAID, mine can't so I opted for File Sync.

I use FreeFileSync. You can use it to create a job that will sync the whole drive or specific folders to a target drive. I just picked the folders that I want to sync, not the whole drive.

I can choose to schedule the job but I rather not since my PC is not always ON, I just manually run the job whenever I have the time, but I make sure I do it as often as I could.

Protect your data! Backup your backup! :)

Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt Touchscreen/Digitizer Repair

Quick and short guide, if you don't feel that you're up to the task, don't do it, go get someone who can (and pay them), but if you wan't to save a few hundred pesos and labor cost and don't want to line up to CM's service center, then read on.

Pry open the tablet, carefully! Try to snap open one corner, and as much as possible do not use metal tools at you could scratch the chassis. Once you've opened up a corner, you can work your way around the whole chassis (slowly!) with only your fingers or using a plastic tool that you can use to pry it open.

Carefully lift the latch that holds the LCD and digitizer's FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) that connects it to the mainboard, then remove the cable.

Using a plastic tool, carefully remove the LCD from the touchscreen/digitizer, just slightly move the retaining clip away from the LCD, give a bit of slack to release the LCD.

The tablet disassembled. Seen on this photo are the touchscreen/digitizer, the LCD and the last is the mainboard with the huge battery.

People complain that the WIFI is weak, and I now know why, since the WIFI antenna is short.

Now go to LRT Mall, look for shops, someone posted in CM Fusion Bolt's page that he found a store selling a digitizer for only 250PHP, I didn't bother looking around since I found one for 350PHP, not bad.

The part number is C182123A1-FPC659DR-04

Manufacturer or brand is HOTATOUCH

On to the repair, I did this inside our car while parked at SM MOA, the only tool I have is an old credit card.

Carefully detach the digitizer from the plastic bezel, use a hard piece of plastic such as an ATM or credit card to pry it open.

BE CAREFUL not to cut yourself, cause I did! Ouch!

The digitizer is held by double sided tape to the bezel, the original tape was still sticky but I decided to add a new layer of tape anyway.

Carefully stick the new digitzer to the bezel, make sure that you insert the FPC (flexible printed circuit) cable through the hole.

Connect the digitzer's and LCD's FPC to the mainboard.

Power up and make sure everything is working fine, then snap the bezel back to the chassis.

Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done! You just saved yourself some money for doing it all by yourself.

Total cost: 350 PHP