It has been awhile since I actually disassembled a laptop or even written an article. Fortunately, when I was back in hometown for new year, my brother who trusted my ability to disassemble laptop had offered me the opportunity to clean his Dell Latitude E4300.

This guide will explain detailed step by step way on how to dismantle to clean a Dell Latitude E4300 notebook.

READ ME

Advices taken here are taken at your own risk. AhWee.com will be held no responsibility if your laptop malfunction or lose your warranty.

NOTE: Even though Dell said disassembling laptop yourself would lose your warranty, but I haven’t void anybody’s warranty in any possible way yet.

Tools You Need For Dismantling and Cleaning

1. Philips Screwdriver (Size #0 is great)
2. Flat Blade Screwdriver (usually a test pen)
3. A brush (about 1 inch or 2 cm wide would do it, not too big)

It pays to go to your nearest hardware store and get a well fit Phillips screwdriver because you don’t want to spoil the screws in your laptop.

Before You Start

Here are a few things you’ll need to do before you start to disassemble your Dell Latitude E4300.

1. Clear your Table
   Ensure that you have plenty of space (1 meter square would be great) to put all the components so they won’t go missing or falling off the table.
2. Prepare a Small Container for Screws
   Every single screws taken out from the laptop has their own job in keeping the computer intact. Don’t lose them.
3. Disconnect all the Cables & Components
   It’s wise to disconnect all usb cables, pendrives, power cords.
4. Put Some Cloth or Thin Sponge Under the Laptop
   To make sure that the rough table surface would not scratch your laptop.
5. Remove the Battery
   To remove the battery from your Dell Latitude E4300, unlock 2 of the latches and remove the battery out from the battery bay.
   
6. Ground the Motherboard
   When the battery is removed, simply ground the motherboard by pressing on the power button for a few seconds.
7. Ground your Hands
   Ground your hands by wearing a wrist grounding strap or touching an unpainted metal surface from time to time.

Getting excited? We’re good to go now.

Step 1 : Remove The Harddisk

Always (I mean like every freaking time), remove the harddisk first and store it inside an antistatic bag if possible.

1. Turn the laptop upside down. Note the harddisk is at the lower right hand corner.
2. Unscrew two M3×3 screws.
   
3. Slide the harddisk out from it’s compartment.

Step 2 : Remove The Hinge Cover

I like the hinge cover in E4300, very flexible (very easy to break too) and easy to remove.

1. Note the indentation at the right side of the hinge cover, that’s the place where you start.
2. Pry up the hinge cover using your test pen.
3. Slowly lift up the whole thing from right to left.
   

Step 3 : Remove The Keyboard

After you remove the hinge cover, you can see three screws that secures the keyboard.

1. Unscrew all the three M2×3 screws located at the top of the keyboard.
2. Lift the keyboard up from the top, then slide the keyboard out.
3. The connector is not a wire so it slides out together along with the keyboard.
   

Step 4 : Remove The LCD Screen

1. Turn your laptop upside down, remove two M2.5×4 screws securing the display assembly on the white support.
   
2. Remove two more M2.5×4 screws at the back of the laptop
   
3. Turn the laptop rightside up and open the screen as far as possible.
4. Remove the display cable with the blue tab.
5. Remove 3 (white, grey, black) antennas that is labelled “Display”.
   
6. Slowly lift the LCD screen out from its respective compartments.

Step 5 : Remove The Palm Rest

Note that this is the hardest part during a laptop disassembly. Be extra careful here to make sure every cable are dislodged and every screw is unscrewed before taking the palm rest apart.

1. Turn the laptop upside down and remove the two M2.5×8 from the bottom of the computer and two M2×3 screws from the harddisk’s compartment.
   
   Obviously, I forgot to remove the harddisk first, sorry.
2. Turn the laptop rightside up, remove the five M2.5×8 screws and five M2.5×5 screws from the palm rest. The sizes are labelled beside each screw.
   
3. Remove 6 cables that connects the palm rest to the motherboard.
4. Start from the back of the laptop, slowly disengage every hooks until you have the whole palm rest out.

NOTE: If you think something is not right with the palm rest (it is not coming out or something), chances is that there are still some screws or cable still connected. Trust your instincts.

Step 6 : Remove The Dirty Fan

After the palm rest have been removed, you can see the system fan clearly.

1. Disconnect the cable that connects the fan to the motherboard.
2. Remove one M2.5×5 screw.
   

Sponge of dust would usually clog the air vent. It is extremely normal actually.

There you go, Dell Latitude E4300 disassembled.

Please inform me if I missed any of the crucial steps, wrote wrong screw dimensions or even forgot to add the tools needed to complete this guide.

More laptop disassembly guides at the Laptop Disassembly Archive.

Apple introduced its newest tablet style product called the Apple iPad on 27th of January at San Francisco. I watched the Keynote; everybody was dead silent when Steve Jobs ran through all the features available on the iPad, unlike the cheers and applauses on the iPhone during its first debut.

When I looked through Facebook, tonnes of disappointed Apple fans updated their status with “iPad, a gigantic iPod Touch”. Myself on the other hand think the Apple iPad is “the future” if Apple would be bothered to revise it.

Apple has always focused on user interface to redesigned our lives. On the Apple iPhone, Apple redesigned the way we use mobile phones.  On the iPad however, Apple have done a superb job focusing on user interface, but has it redesigned our lives?
From the looks of our many Facebook colleagues, not quite.

If Apple thinks that enlarging the iPod Touch and introducing the iBookStore would mean anything near to “redesign lives”, Apple is dead wrong. It is simply not going to work. Look, the iPad will be mostly used in offices or at home. We have high speed laptops and desktops at these places, why should we the iPad instead?

Here are the questions.

1. Is the iPad better at web surfing?
   I doubt so, can it open 30 tabs to work with?
2. Is the iPad worth $499 to share & view pictures with?
   Highly doubt so.
3. Does the iPad score better at watching movies?
   Definitely a no if you’re a fan of big screens and an audio freak.
4. Is the iPad better at listening to music?
   I already have an iPod touch mate.
5. How about email (Apple hyped a lot at this)?
   I can definitely reply email faster with my workstation.
6. But how about reading books with your iPad?
   Sounds like a future to me.

I beg to differ what Steve Jobs has explained in the keynote. He said the iPad is far better at doing some important things than the iPhone and the Macbook. From the questions I have asked above, I’d say the iPad failed at doing everything. It is just another “Improved Netbook” that fails at everything.

So the only reason I think anybody would use to persuade themselves to get the iPad is the book reading feature. But does that justify the need to get another $499 gadget ($829 at its best spec)?

I personally think the iPad was mixed with the hype of iPhone thus blinded Apple’s development team from searching an identity (or a specialty) for its newest product.

The Apple iPhone has an identity, a revolutionized mobile phone. The Apple iPod also has an identity as well, iPod revolutionize your music. The iPad? Let’s just say as things stands now, the iPad has yet to have an identity of its own.

Apple iPad, Revolutionize Your Home

When I first saw the size of the iPad, what came to me was that this is something I would love to play with when I am taking a break away from my workstation (a laptop or a desktop). Ultimately a gadget perfect for a home, where I can do whatever I do in the living room all in that one piece of metal.

A Library at Home

Apple has done this and I would say this is the biggest step to the future. Many kids have always read story books under a shade which could cause eye problems later in life, same goes to reading books in the iPhone, I can barely see the texts. Reading books in a laptop or desktop however, does not give you the sense of satisfaction.

Therefore the new iBookStore for the iPad in my personal opinion is a huge step forward. Apple iPad has the size of an average book size and is perfect for reading, in any position.

Of course, Amazon’s Kindle has done it before Apple, but is it as user friendly as the iPad?

Built-in Home Telephone

Home phones has run its course in human life now, it is old technology and should be replaced. I irk every time the telephone rings (especially the old ring noise) and how unfitting it is to room spaces and usefulness.

Sometimes it is even more nerve breaking when you are to jot down notes through your phone. You just couldn’t find the pen and paper! While iPad does it all with just a flick of a finger.

Built-in TV

While revolutionizing a home, a built-in TV should not be missed in the iPad. Build the iPad in such a way that it becomes a second TV at home, wirelessly. This way, parents and children would not fight for the favourite TV channels and end up with cold faces at dining tables.

I believe with all these built into the Apple iPad, it will give Apple targeted customers a reason to replace household things (especially the telephone) with the iPad regardless of its price.

What’s the point of creating a product when any older product can easily outdo it? Create one that is made to substitute older products. That is what triggers human nature to change, in which we call revolution.

It has become a growing trend whereby bloggers and website owners use Facebook’s multi-functional platform to spread their new articles over a wide array of readers. The application I am going to talk about today would be the built-in “Notes” application.

Facebook Notes in Detail

Facebook Notes, from what I can perceive is actually a mini blog for Facebook users. I have seen many friends posting their own Notes before, emotional Notes usually. The use of Facebook Notes does not just stop there.

Stretching further we have the “Import an External Blog” function. That is the function you can use to synchronize your website (blog) articles to Facebook Notes.

How does Import External Blog work?

FB Notes will be notified as your RSS feed is updated. It reproduces another a copy of your article and post it on your FB News Feed. However, the setback for this function is that you will not have hits to your blog because your readers actually read your article on Facebook.

I personally think having more readers to read your article on many platforms is better than limiting reader’s access to your articles only on your website.

How To Do It

As you can see at the bottom of the Facebook user interface, you can see the Application Bar, or whatever it is called. Let’s call it application bar for the time being.

At the most bottom left there is a button named Application. Click on that you will see the past application you have used before and the lot. Look for the application called Notes that has an icon of a notepad.

On next page, you will get to see all of your friend’s notes. On the right panel, there is this Notes Settings.

If you want to start writing notes right away, you could just click on the Write a New Note located at the top of Notes Settings. Otherwise, click on the Import a blog link.

Next you will see a textbox where you get to type in your RSS feed address.

Type in your RSS feed address, tick the disclaimer and import away.

Hmm, Sherlock Holmes, I’ve always had great expectations over novel based movies and most of the time they disappoint me. Everybody told me to watch this movie like it is some kind of “must watch” movie, but it turned out that the maximum I could give for the movie was a mere 6.5/10.

Before I start my review, I must say that I am not a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I have not read any of the books before, I only knew the title existed before and I am only giving honest review based on what I perceive the movie. One of the reason why I am giving 6.5 (instead of 7.8 at imdb) is because of the “something is missing” feeling I got after the movie.

Storyline

I learned that the storyline of the Sherlock Holmes movie has nothing to do with any of its novels. The characters were just simply taken out from the book and they invented their own storyline. In fact, the current Sherlock Holmes does not even take a magnifying glass anymore. That’s all right, given that if the storyline is interesting, which is not, so to speak.

The flow of the story is rubbish. It starts out with some action then it went all (quite) monotonous for probably one and a half hour then shot all the way to its climax and ends with another baddie coming into the picture. Typical movie, I nearly fell asleep.

However, as bad as the storyline could be, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) did a pretty good job in wrapping up the movie. Whatever that needs to be explained was explained.

Action

I am quite astonished by the fact that they came up with this very creative idea of analyzing which body points to attack, they tell you the flow of attack and how traumatized the person would be before an attack. It is like a walk through on a series of attacks, then followed by the real deal.

The magic tricks, or should I say science tricks used by the Lord Blackwood was also pretty cool. But the “Wow factor” isn’t there, probably due to the explanation given had made the magic tricks look uncool.

Humour

Throughout the movie, there were a lot of jokes … cold jokes to be exact. I laughed at a few, but most of them I just couldn’t be bothered to care. It does give us the idea that the characters are witty, but not all of the jokes are laughable.

However, do pay attention to the few that are laughable.

Actors

I have mixed feelings over whether or not Robert Downey Jr. is the right person to act Sherlock Holmes. I agree that Robert is a superb actor; his act in Iron Man is flawless. However, his British accent is down the drain. Robert’s an American, so having him to speak in British accent is like asking a bird to quack.

His role as Sherlock Holmes is perfect and he had shown the wittiness of Sherlock Holmes, but had failed terribly at his British accent.

In a Nutshell

Movie wise, it is just another 2009 movie, not as spectacular as District 9 or Avatar. It does contain its own creativity though and gets you to wonder how the magic was done. But it is just not good enough. Not to mention the movie cannot live without Robert Downey Jr. If you put him out of the picture, the movie fails entirely. On the other hand, if you put him in the picture, his British accent sucks, which is another factor why I rated the movie so low.

Choice wise, if you think your cinema does not have subtitles, spending regular ticket price on such a movie is a waste of money. If you think you can understand all kinds of accent, you might also want to think twice because the movie is not that good. If I were given the chance again, I would choose to save the money instead.

My point is, Sherlock Holmes 2009 is not a movie worth watching in the cinema.

Pugna has been a really quiet hero these days. I don’t often see Pugna in the field, even if I see people playing Pugna, I often wonder why they do not pawn despite the number of AGI and INT heroes the enemy has. With all the buff on items such as Dagon and Scepter, Oblivion has become a hero that is capable of achieving Godlike easily. And to be honest my method of playing this hero has never changed since 5.84. Thus, my first guide will be on Pugna.

Table of Content

Prologue of a Dota Player

1. Pugna in Detail
2. Skills
3. Item Builds
4. Playing Method
5. Replays
6. Updates
7. Conclusion & Comments
8. Reference & Credits

1. Pugna in Detail

Pugna The Oblivion is one of the easiest hero to use in Dota, especially when the opponent have no stuns or disable skills. From early to mid game, most heroes (except for a few tanks) are food to Pugna. The reason newbies feel it is tough to play Pugna is probably because of his extremely fragile HP. Pugna’s inability to contribute to a team also makes him the least favourable hero to choose during tournaments.

Version: 6.64 | Range: 600 | Movement speed: 315
Str: 17 + 1.45 | Agi: 16 + 1 | Int: 26 + 4
Damage: 45 – 53 | HP: 473 | Mana: 338 | Armor: 1
Hero Effectiveness: Early & Mid Game
Type: Solo Killer
Primary Damage: Skills
Gank: Poor
Solo-able: Yes
Ease of Use: Excellent

2. Skills

Nether Blast (Active)
Creates a blast of exploding pulses from the Nether Plane, dealing damage to units and buildings.

Cooldown: 5.5 seconds.

Comment: Like its description, this is Pugna’s main skill for early game (At least until you get a dagon). It deals damage to buildings too so the 450 tower gold is easy to obtain. Damage comes in effect after the blast animation.

Decrepify (Active)
Pugna casts a powerful banishing magic on a unit. The unit is sent to the ethereal plane for a small period of time, reducing its movement speed by 50% and rendering it unable to attack. It takes 44% extra damage from spells.

Cooldown: 13/11/9/7 seconds.

Comment: This is Pugna’s best magic support skill. Usually you commence a kill with dicrepify. The 44% extra damage from spells is extremely useful.

Nether Ward (Active)
Summons a Nether Ward that prevents enemy heroes from regenerating mana and can cast Mana Flare, which deals damage to enemy heroes as they cast spells.
Lasts 25 seconds. Each level increases the area of effect of the Ward’s Mana Flare, the Mana Flare damage, the negative mana regen and the hp of the ward.

Cooldown: 35 seconds.

Comment: Not really useful when you are owning, but very useful at later stage of the game whereby you are supposed to support the whole team by punishing enemy as they cast spells.

Life Drain (Active)
Pugna summons a very powerful draining magic that absorbs the life essence of an enemy unit. 
Lasts 9 seconds.

Cooldown: 22 
Scepter Upgradeable: Increases life drain and removes cooldown.

Comment: Basically you just activate this skill and suck HP out of your enemy. Scepter has now made this skill with 0 cooldown which is a very huge buff to Pugna.

2.1. Skill Builds

Max out Nether Blast. You only need 3 levels for decrepify, because 3 seconds is more than enough to cast a blast and dagon. The rest of the skill points should go into Life Drain and stats. Leave Nether Ward until you think that your contribution to the team is declining.

3. Item Builds

Now there are debates over non-dagon Pugna and Pugna with Dagon level 1. I am not going to follow them, I have played Pugna with the same method for 5 years now and my method still works.

Your item should start with (according to priority)

if you think you’re getting nuked badly

Why do I even tell you what item to buy at the start? This is due to the fact that possessing the correct starting item gives you the “edge” over your opponent. The chicken will help you transport all your things over so that your trips to the fountain can be reduced.

Your end item combination as a killer (according to priority) should be

or  or  and 

There are 3 options to choose for your sixth item, to get Boots of Travel before or after the sixth item is totally up to you. Orchid if there are enemy worth silencing, Assault Cuirass if you need tank, Buriza if you need more physical damage. Usually I would go for Orchid because it amplifies damage on the affected hero as well. This increases my ability to support in late game.

The reason I am getting Dagon first is because of the amount of extra damage it provides. At level 1, it is 576 extra damage (when used with decrepify). At level 5, Dagon gives 800 damage, 1152 with decrepify, which is huge amount of damage. If you can complete Dagon level 1 before early game ends, massing up gold for the 4 upgrades (about 1350 * 4) is pretty easy because all you do is kill hero when you see them.

Scepter upgrades your Life Drain (level 3) to 250 HP/s and eliminates cooldown, that’s why it is the second most important item to keep you alive in the game. The last thing any melee hero wants is you sucking up their HP when they are on the brink of killing you.

Guinsoo is just an item I buy for almost every INT hero. For this hero it is delayed.

Heart gives you more HP so that you have time (before you’re dead) to use Life Drain at the end of the game when AGI and STR heroes gets quick in wielding their swords at high damage.

Otherwise, you could go for…

Many people argue that Pugna with Dagon is not a really good choice because of the low HP. I say it is because the opponent has too many stunners and disablers, making Pugna nearly impossible to hunt people even with the HP heal from Life Drain.

In this situation, your best bet is to get as much HP as possible and be a tank + support for your team. Scepter gives you bonus HP allowing you to survive better at early game. As you complete your Heart, life will be easier as you quickly farm for Guinsoo and Shiva’s Guard.

If you farm fast enough for the first 4 items, your support for the team would be enormous, making you extremely reliable given that your opponent’s DPS does not kill you in a few seconds. Not a strategy I would use though, but this is a second option you might want to consider.

4. Playing Method

Like I have said earlier, Pugna is a very easy hero to play but also very soft. Your first item should be Dagon and you should max it at level 5. The amount of damage you can deal is 1152 (Dagon) + 468 (Blast) = 1620. With Dagon’s fastest cooldown at 24 seconds at level 5 and uses only 100 mana. At this stage, nobody wants to go near you during mid game.

However you must bear in mind that your killing window is only about 3 seconds, anything more than that is too dangerous as you might get killed by enemy heroes. The gif image below is how fast you should kill a hero.

If she’s (Mirana) not dead with red HP, you might want to use Life Drain and kill her. If Mirana still has half HP left, you might want to consider escaping because the whole team is coming after you now. Not to mention the double damage being activated by her.

Also as you can see I did not go for Bracers (which I think is a waste of gold) because I know how to spot opportunities. Sometimes weak enemies are baits and should not be engaged using Pugna due to his fragile HP. The idea is to stay alert and don’t rush with Pugna.

Normally it is impossible to decrepify and attack the decrepified hero. However, there is a catch for that skill (is it a bug? I have no idea).

Get a orb effect item such as  and . Other orb effects such as Satanic or Diffusal Blade does not work though, I don’t know why. But if you want to attack your opponent despite him still stuck in the etheral dimension, I suggest including Desolator into your item list. Because at late game this will provide you with the best offensive opportunity after you have used all your skill combos.

4.1 Farming

Nether Blast at level 4 is a very good skill against ranged creeps, the blast will definitely kill them in one go. It is a farming skill that you can definitely spam around with the short cooldown. You can even use it for towers, it deals huge amount of damage so last hitting the tower is fairly easy.

Otherwise, you should always practise last hitting creeps. Pugna gives extremely high INT increase every level ups, that gives you a significantly large amount of damage so last hitting creeps should be fairly easy with Pugna.

4.2 Early Game

Try to solo for early game. This is due to the fact that the time you can kill people is early until mid game. So, try your best to solo and farm for Dagon. Solo gives you the level and farming advantages over all other 4 heroes.

Occasionally you could nuke opponent hero with your high attack damage at early game. This can be done by weakening them to a point that you can finish him with a Decrepify + Nether Blast combo. Nether Blast is your best bet to kill people when you don’t have a Dagon yet.

Also, break towers with Nether Blast so that you get the 450 gold. Most of the time, you want to do that when you are 400 gold away from getting Dagon. Because if you break the tower too early, you are vulnerable to ganks earlier in the game.

4.3 Mid Game

By this time you should have at least Dagon level 1. With that you can roam around with Decrepify + Blast + Dagon, most of the time it will kill AGI and INT heroes even with full HP.

Also watch out for the 40 second Dagon cooldown and don’t get greedy.

4.4 Late Game

By now you should know that your Decrepify + Blast + Dagon (DBD) combo does not work without first lowering their HP to a certain degree. This is when your Nether Wards comes into play, it helps you damage your opponent when they cast a spells under the influence of the aura.

Don’t be surprised, the Ward deals quite an amount of damage that you can never imagine. Having said that, late game is the last place you want to be when you play Pugna. It is always advisable to end the game at 30 – 40 minutes when you are using Pugna.

Sometimes when dealing with DPS heroes such as Phantom Assassin at late game, your DBD combo does little damage to her. At that instant, before doing the combo, you might want to Life Drain first then only do the last blow with BDB combo. Pay extra attention to the huge critical numbers too.

Alternatively, you could also decrepify opponent hero (or yourself, but not advisable) so that they can’t do physical damage on to you. Hopefully in those 3 seconds, you can escape to a place where ally heroes will be able to help you out.

4.5 Backing Up Team Mates

Pugna is a terrible backup. There are only 2 things you can do when your opponent is on the verge of killing your team mates. You can either, kill him with your combo or decrepify the fastest one and run together.

Of course, if skill and HP permits, you can block the enemy like how you block creeps while decrepifying him. In that position he is unable to move beyond your point and is stuck between killing your team mate, killing you and escaping. This throws him into a state of confusion and if he hesitates a tad longer, your other team mates will arrive and back you up, possibly killing the charging hero.

4.6 Things to Watch Out

Stuns, Voodoos, Shackles, Swap and all disable skills. These extends your engage time with enemy which is always not a very good position to be in. Pugna is an “in and out” type of hero.

Any kind of heroes with the above ability should be kept a certain distance unless you are very confident to kill him.

5. Replays

Here’s a replay on how I used Pugna with my Dagon method.

6. Updates

In 6.65, the decrease of time delay of Nether Blast’s damage to come into effect is very noticeable.

7. Conclusion & Comments

As you can see it is a pretty straight forward hero to play. As long as you stay away from trouble and sneak into battle with your Decrepify + Blast + Dagon combo, your opponent will be shocked at the amount of damage you are capable of dealing.

Please note that I am also human and am still learning. Hence, if you have a better method of using Pugna you can share them with me. Thanks for reading my Dota Hero Guide.

8. Reference & Credits

• Images and real skill names are from dota-allstars.com
• Main Pugna photo are from kong113 in Photobucket.
• Thanks to Rz3r-Sapphire for his invaluable team playing experience and knowledge.
• Thanks to -Winds- for his brotherly support.
• Thanks to KahEe for her superb editing.

This is my first guide for Dota Heroes Guide. If you would love to follow up on my updates on other heroes, do subscribe to AhWee.com’s RSS feed.

Avatar, a pre-Christmas movie that was filmed with newly developed technology that simulates human sight has become (in my opinion) the best Christmas gift for many movie goers. Every time I exit the cinema I have a number in mind that quantifies the movie as a whole. And it has been a very long time since I last rate a movie this high.

This is the first time I am writing movie review for my website, I will do my utmost best to make it interesting and limit spoilers. As you can see, a high 8.5 from me, imdb.com rated it a whooping 8.9 which I think is a tad overrated, so why 8.5 and not 8.9?

Computer Graphics

Let’s start first with CG since this movie is made purposely on the sole purpose of delivering a remarkable and “a higher level” of realism. The 3D technology used in this film is a step further than any other 3D movies I have watched before. The depth of field effect is very much focused in this film, making the movie extremely realistic.

Artwork & Creativity

I highly object that fact that the alien, also called the Na’Vi is very creative human imagination. Mainly because they look exactly like human and even express their love like humans too (I will explain more about this in a moment)!

However, the design of Pandora, the home planet of the Na’Vis is a work of mesmeric art. It is such an eye candy that you feel the urge to enter their world while watching the movie.

Jake following Neytiri in the woods

The woods lights up every steps the Na’Vis passes through at night. The flora and faunas are also a piece of art.

Curious Jake Sully

The creatures from Pandora is pretty similar to what we have on earth such as wolves (Nantang), tiger wannabe (Thanator), rhinos (Hammerhead Titanothere), huge ass birds (Banshee and Toruk). They are pretty unique in a way that each one of them expresses the nature of Pandora in some way unexplainable in words. The really imaginative part was that Na’Vis have the power to bond with any beasts in Pandora through some sort of a plug and play device through their hair.

Neytiri on Thanator

James Cameron (script writer) has also done a superb job when introducing us to the Na’Vi’s culture. There isn’t a better way to express alien’s culture.

The young adult Na'Vis earning their Banshees

Storyline

Before I went into the cinema I have read and heard many comments regarding the “recognizable” storyline in Avatar. After 3 hours, I must say that the storyline is nowhere near recognizable in any other productions. There are many hidden surprises within the movie.

Unlike Transformers II, Avatar has no room for irrelevant and lame jokes (I can’t see no dog humping on Neytiri’s legs). Every part of the 2 hours 40 minutes movie is interesting and viewers are kept engrossed on the entire film. Although the storyline is not as intriguing as District 9, it still contains all the elements of a good storyline.

The epic war at the end was also very carefully panned out. You get this feeling that everything will turn out all right, but it is just very tricky to guess what’s coming next, the plot tantalizes viewer with lots of unexpected outcomes.

The overwhelming human force

Neytiri was excessively fierce at many instances too.

Emotions & Feel

As you can expect from James Cameron’s films, the emotional wow factor is there. Paired with Zoë Saldaña’s awesome act, you can feel the sorrow as Neytiri found out that his father died when the hometree came crashing down.

If you’re a guy you could even feel the confusion over Neytiri’s sudden change of emotion when she found out that Jake did not tell her about the incoming human invasion. Seriously I did not expect her to get angry so easily.

Jake’s patriotic speech after the biologist’s death was also very emotional. I had to keep myself together so that tears do not obstruct my view of the screen.

Jake giving a patriotic speech after landing on his Toruk

Setbacks

I may have rate this movie exceptionally high, but this does not mean that there are no let-downs at all. I have mentioned earlier how the Na’Vis express their love like human beings through kissing as well. I mean, how unoriginal can this be?

I always have this idea that aliens express love in some other way, like hold their tails together instead of holding hands or kiss in some way we human beings can’t imagine. Heck, the make out we had in Avatar was exactly a human being’s make out. That’s like watching a male gorilla smooch a female gorilla, give me a break.

Another would be the sound of the missile blasts on Na’Vis’ hometree. The blasts sounded like the bashing of empty steel containers, similar to the sounds that a child would produce when he imagines himself as a drummer.

Na'Vi's Hometree

Conclusion

The setbacks can be ignored, I am writing them for the sake of expressing my own views that’s all. I felt the “something is wrong” or “this is too fake” feeling in many movies I have watched before. In Avatar, well lets just say these only occurs at the smooching part. The rest of the show was practically awesome.

Avatar is definitely a “must watch” movie especially if there is a 3D cinema near you! If you are planning on watching DVD on your little 15 inch laptop, think again because you don’t want to watch 2009’s best movie on a little screen.

My journey into the world of Dota Allstars gaming kicked off in year 2004. Since then, I have been an extremely loyal Dota player even until now, which is almost 6 years later. I felt ashamed to say this, but I have grown with the development of the game, whereby more than a quarter of my life has been spent mastering the game.

As I recalled back at all the hours spent on playing the game, it felt like I had not accomplished anything in life. Thus, I realized that I should put all the knowledge I learnt from the game to good use, by writing guides for every single hero in Dota Allstars.

My Little DotA Background

In year 2004, the latest version was the 5.84. It was extremely buggy and my first hero was Drow Ranger vs. my cousin’s Medusa. I could recognize all my own confusions back then by looking at some of my friends play now. I was a noob (newbie) and my brother’s suggestion to use frost arrow for higher damage did not help either. I lost of course, which was not much of a surprise as not many get to enjoy the taste of winning in their first Dota match.

I can still remember being jeered as a noob and was attacked repeatedly in a 5 v 5 match the next day. It was then I told them, “Instead of insulting me, why don’t you teach me how to play?”. A few taught me but many left the game.

After a week of training, I was asked to play 1 v 5 with my cousins. At that time my favourite hero was Sand King, I owned all of them but sadly I lost the game because I did not push early enough.

That week alone created a chain reaction that triggered all my interest in the game. I daresay that I am extremely good at the game, but not the best though, never once did I enter any DotA competitions before. This is probably due to my fear of the intense tournament pressures.

Because I am so good and yet I am still not in any competitions; these contributes to the lack of success within me. However, by writing guides that reflects all my experience and knowledge in Dota, (hopefully) it can bring some enlightenment to current newbies that are capable of or planning to play in tournaments.

The guide that I am writing will be a Dota Hero Guide; it will lay out some examples on how to use the hero like how I have been using it for the past 6 years. My guide might not be perfect, but if you think it is far from what you expected and happen to know a more effective way of using the hero, do share it with me.

You will also realize that most of my guides focus on self-development and not much on team strategy. Many people will argue that team strategy is more important than self-development. However, I believe that if you want to contribute to a team strategy, you must first develop individually in order to contribute. If you can handle yourself well, you will be able to adapt into any team strategies thrown onto you.

If you are currently a WCG tournament player, I presume that you have very little to learn on an individual level from the game of DotA. However, if you’re still new to the game and would love to seek more knowledge at a pro level, prepare yourself for a real treat.

By the way, I can’t believe my editor protested at the amount of articles I will be writing about in the next few months.

Having stayed in Sydney for such a long period of time, I had finally visited one of the so-called most “prestigious” kart tracks in Sydney. It was extremely pleasurable to feel the adrenaline rush when I am back racing again despite the fact that I did not enjoy racing at Eastern Creek Karting Raceway entirely.

Eastern Creek Karting Raceway offers Arrive and Drive packages that cater for racers of all age, starting from as young as six years old. If you are organizing an activity for your company, you could also opt for the corporate hire. Since there were only 3 of us at the point of arrival, so we hired the 9 HP karts for 30 minutes.

Safety

I have never raced anywhere other than on Malaysian tracks before I visit Eastern Creek Karting Raceway. I must admit that I am extremely surprised by how many safety gears we were supposed to wear. We were provided a pair of gloves, a full body suit and of course, the helmet. In Malaysia, we are only asked to wear a helmet (sometimes not necessary at all).

There was also a short briefing regarding kart racing which was shown on TV and new racers are supposed to watch it. So, as long as you don’t drive straight into the wall, you will be fine.

Kart Condition

Lady Luck was on our side that day, the technicians provided us the wrong kart. Instead of registering us to the 9 HP karts, we were given the 4 stroke 13 Hp karts.

I personally think that the karts are pretty well maintained, the power difference is very minimum, unlike many other tracks whereby their karts have a huge difference in power.

This was the first time I raced in Australia, and also the first time I experienced the heaviest steering in my entire life. It requires a huge amount of effort to turn the car, probably due to the size of the kart and its weight. Did I mention about the enormous 4 stroke engines?

After 13 minutes of racing I barely had enough strength to turn into any corners. Fortunately enough, the staff was generous enough to allow us to race in two 15 minutes intervals.

The Track

The track we raced was the Hire Circuit Two (730m). The track was awesome, except for the fact that the surface repairs were extremely bumpy. After 30 minutes of racing I felt like vomiting.

Other than the bumpy track, it was fun racing there. The Hire Circuit Two consists of many types of low and high speed corners. Especially at the end where there is a 3 joint left hand high speed corners which are fantastic to drive in (pretty similar to the Turkish GP), if only you could ignore the rigorous bump.

On a side note, if you like straight line racing, this is probably not the best circuit to race in, because there is no straight line at all! Thus it is a very demanding track, both mentally and physically.

Overall

I was surprised that at the end of each 15 minute intervals, we were given our own lap times to look at. The lap time’s sheet is not something many tracks offer. My fastest time was 45.19 seconds per lap.

In a nutshell, my search for a proper kart racing track still continues. Eastern Creek is good, but the bumps are definitely a huge turn off. I might be back again for Hire Circuit 3 but I am definitely not going to pay for Hire Circuit 1 and 2 ever again.

If you ask me whether travelling all the way down to Blacktown to race worth it or not. I am afraid I will have to answer that question after I tried Hire Circuit 3.

Imagine the internet you have now is being controlled by corporations that feed you with limited information they have selected, and charge you for it. If you are a website owner (or a blogger), you have to pay a sum of money to maintain smooth connection to your website. If you do not pay the premium, you will be put on the “Internet bus lane”. That is a world without Net Neutrality.

Actually, Net Neutrality is an individual thing, sort of like our rights on the internet to voice our opinions and to choose anything we would like to see/read on the internet. However, there are some corporations who would love to strip us off our rights and be in control of what we see and charge us for it.

Losing both our freedom and our hard earned money, if you can realize the logic here, it is nothing near to a win-win situation for us.

A country without Net Neutrality is China; any websites with unregulated content are blocked by their “Great Firewall of China”. I must say it sounds better than The Great Wall of China and it definitely helped the government to silence their citizens,  which is comparable to having ultimate authority over the slaves in the olden days (just minus the abuse and pain).

That is a serious violation of human rights. Do you want your country to be like that?

The only logical reason that we can accept grudgingly is that China eliminated Net Neutrality in the name of muting protests and riots, which is acceptable to a certain amount of degree. While for the US (and possibly the whole world after a period of time), they are doing it for the profitability of their corporation.

The internet has always been a Blue Ocean that encourages innovation and creativity into the market. If the government truly cares about innovation and creativity amongst their citizens, they would do anything to support Net Neutrality. Otherwise, the government just does not give a shit about their citizens.

To sum this article up, I will say that Net Neutrality is extremely crucial to any nation that promotes intelligence. The nation that supports Net Neutrality would prosper indefinitely due to the immense knowledge available on the internet. Any nation that destroys Net Neutrality first would breed a population that can be perfectly described by a mandarin idiom, “frogs in a well”, which is basically a metaphor for uninformed and dumbed down citizens.

Tell me what you think about Net Neutrality. If you truly see the importance of Net Neutrality, help spread the importance of it to everyone you know.

Long before money (silver and gold coins) was invented, the barter system was used by traders to exchange goods. Since the first gold coin was forged from its cast, money has been appreciated by many, for it is light and easy to carry. As time passed by, appreciation towards the invention of money has been clouded by greed and this eventually leads to Credit Crunch.

However, as I was surfing the internet the other day, I stumbled onto a very inspiring and eye-opening video, the “One Red Paper Clip” video on YouTube.

This is a story of a young man who bartered all the way from a tiny red paper clip to a house.

Needless to say, if an average Joe can trade all the way from one small paper clip to a house, I am pretty sure there are  millions of people who are struggling financially in this rough financial thunderstorm can barter their way out of debt as well.

On top of the video, I have also discovered that Robert Kiyosaki, a financial guru had organized a 3-day-course called “Art of a Deal” a week ago where participants did nothing but traded goods with each another without money.

This had me wondering if it is possible to survive or even achieve financial success during this financial meltdown through bartering?

It is quite certain that barter system will not replace the money system we have now considering how deep the mess we are in. But is it possible that bartering is the new way of achieving financial freedom? Has the buying and selling behaviour reverted and does it still take money to make money?

You tell me.