I have just achieved my first ever certificate in my life, the AWS Certified Cloud Partitioner certificate.
So how did I prepare for my exam?
First I went to this website and created a free trial account with my email account:
https://www.safaribooksonline.com/home/
This trial account allows you to have 10 days of free access to the website and you can watch as many tutorial videos as you want. Their tremendous amount of video/book library is just awesome and you will definitely learn a lot by reading/watching their materials.
They have an AWS Certified Cloud Partitioner video listed on their website and the total length of it is about 7 hours. Once I have done watching the video, I purchased mock exams from whizlab:
https://www.whizlabs.com/
The price of AWS Certified Cloud Partitioner mock exams is $15.95. They have a total of 195 questions for your preparation. In general, the tests are easy and I finish all of them in 20 minutes each (65 questions per exam).
When everything is ready, I registered my first exam in AWS training center, they have a list of authorized exam writing centers and you can pick the one that is close to your work/home. Since I live in Hong Kong, I picked Systematic where the location is in Mong Kok and it is extremely close to my office.
When the day had come, I arrived at the exam center on time and showed my registered email to the Systematic receptionist. The lady had probably been working too long, not much expression on her face and her words were cold when she was talking to me. One thing that surprised me is that the security check on me was pretty tight. What I mean is that the receptionist needed to check all of my pockets to make sure nothing was in there. Then I have to hand over my glasses for her to check! WHAT!? That's crazy! I also needed to show my ankle there was nothing hidden under my pant!
When all the checking was done she brought me to a room which was so small. The room capacity only allows 5 people sitting in there. Not only just that, the room smell, and it smelled bad. The lady brought me to a partition and it was so small where I could only just fit into it. In short, the environment was super uncomfortable. Imagine I had to sit into this place for an hour! It was such a nightmare!
Regarding to the exam questions, they were tough! So much difficult compare to the whizlab questions, and I would say the mock exams only matched about 10-20% of the overall AWS exam questions. The questions looked completely new to me and I was shocked. So, what did I do to make myself pass the exam? The answer is: crossing out the one that looks stupid and impossible. By using this strategy I got myself a pass with score 728 of 1000. Thanks God, I don't have to pay another 100 USD for the exam.
In conclusion, by watching the videos from O'Reilly and Whizlab is just not enough to get perfect. Probably you should also watch the videos from AWS training center and read the whitepaper from there.
I am going to prepare for my next AWS exam (AWS Solution Architect Associate) and will keep you guys posted on how to prepare for my exam.
Any question regarding this exam you are always free to email me and ask me.
Good luck and have a nice day!
2016/07/08
SEO - for beginner (Part 2)
In last article, I talked about why I have to SEO my wife's make up page: Hong Kong Make Up Artist. Explained why Facebook advertisement does not work and Google adv is too expensive to pay. I mentioned about some basic SEO that we can done as a beginner and now I will show you what I have setup for the first start of her page.
1) Keywords: this is very important. Keywords that is something related to your page. For example, my wife's page is about make up artist in Hong Kong, so you want to say everything about it. In her website, try to write some content about makeup and anything related to it. Just write naturally, and remember, never ever try to copy content from other website! Google is just too smart and they will know your content is copied somewhere else or not. If they found out your material is copied from somewhere else, no worry, there is no penalties, but your site probably won't show up from the Google search because they think that there is duplicated content. Since they don't want to show duplicated stuffs, they will analyze themselves and pick one that they think the content is original. Talking about keywords, you should remember to add a meta keywords tag and meta description tag in your website. For meta keywords (html), put all the related words in here and write something that can describe your site perfectly in one sentence in meta description tag.
Keywords can be described as short tail keyword and long tail keyword.
Long tail keyword: which is a group of four to seven words or longer.
Short tail keyword: which is one to three words.
So, how they work? Try to think like this: for example: since my wife's website is about makeup, for short tail keyword, it will be: [hong kong makeup], [makeup], [make up artist], etc. For long tail keyword, it will be: [the hong kong makeup artist who can provide airbrush service], [bridal makeup artist based in Hong Kong who can speak french], etc.
Try to imagine this, if you type [hong kong makeup] to search, it will definitely come up thousands of results. If you type [the hong kong makeup artist who can provide airbrush service] to search, the result will be far more less to the short tail keyword because you are looking into more specific result. So how to make your site better? You have to combine two of these keywords. What you have to do is, think of yourself and see what you stand out from others, then type those words into your content. The combination of both short tail and long tail keywords can help to put you to a higher ranking.
So, how do you come up these keywords?
You could sit down and talk with your partner (or just yourself if you don't have any). Brainstorm the keywords that can most representing your website.
Another method is, ask someone who doesn't know you. Tell them about your story and ask them what keywords they will use.
The other way is ask your clients, they are the best answers that you can get because they are you client! You want people like them to come to your page so that you can make business.
The last method I use will be Google's Adwords. To use that tool, search [Google Adwords Keyword Tool]. You have to have google account in order to use this tool. So on the top menu, click [Tool] and click Keyword Planner. There are different ways to give you suggestive keywords. I will show you how I get keywords from the first option. First click on [Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category]. Then you will see the below screen. Fill up your info then click Get Ideas:
You will see the result like this:
Here you go. There is a list that you can try to put it in your website. Depends on what you want to target.
I think most people is interested in what competition means. Generally if the keyword has high competition, then it means that the advertiser has to big higher to win the high ad position, hence it will have a higher CPC (cost per click). If you want to have Google adv on your page you definitely want to build up your page content like above base on the CPC. Anyway, from this idea list, you would want to write something about the eye makeup and eyeliner because they have the highest searches within the month.
I will continue to talk about this topic on next article. Stay tuned!
2016/07/06
SEO - for beginner (Part 1)
Haven't update this page for ages!
Well, during this period, I have been to a lot of things. I have changed my jobs two times at least I believe? The first job was working on Java, Sybase Sql, very common languages as a developer. But now I m working as a MAINFRAME Developer! Sounds crazy eh!? MAINFRAME is totally new to me and I have to learn everything from bottom. Anyway
I will talk about this in another post. Today I want to talk about SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
So basically, what is SEO? When you have a page up on internet, you want people to go to your page right? Unless you want to keep your page private, you want your page to show up in google search result as highest rank as possible. SEO - the term means to optimize your page by tuning all the possible factors to make you page have a higher ranking. This is very important if you have an online business. By SEO (fine tuning your page), your page is expected to have an increased traffic, increased conversions, exposure to new markets and audiences etc.
Why am I talking about this today? Well, I have been facing so much difficulties when I am trying to promote my wife's page: Krace Makeup. I have tried to promote her page in Facebook, but not looking so well. If you haven't promote your page in Facebook before, I will let you know what is the problem. So basically, you create a fans page or community or whatever. After you have invited all your friends to your pages, you want some new audiences to join the page. The first thing that comes to my mind is: pay my money to Facebook. It works like this, you give an mount of money and the promotion date range and they will tell you the expected number of people will join your page. Sounds fair? Well, not really. It really depends on what is your page about. If you page talks about sport, I believe many people would like to join the page. If your going to promote a page like, makeup? Obviously, it is a little bit harder. So what Facebook will do to give you that expected number of people to like your page is that (this is my guess only), they hired certain amount of people to like your page in case the expected number of people cannot be reached. Why am I saying this? Every time I try to promote my page, I will narrow down the target: country = my country, gender = female etc. At the end there will be a number of people liked her Facebook page Krace Makeup, but most of them are OBVIOUSLY not my country people! I clicked inside of the person who liked her page and see if there is any mistake that Facebook has made, but I found that those people country is listed as the place of where my country is, but obviously they are not belong to my country, you can tell by check through all their page inside. So, Facebook advertising doesn't work. I have to think of another way to promote her page Krace Mak Makeup.
Another way that I have tried is paying Google money (Goolge Adv), but that doesn't work well either and the cost is even higher. Why is that? Because each of the click costs pretty high and most of the people just click around the websites by accident and they are not intended to check your website (by most of the cases). So you are actually paying many unwanted clicks.
So I have no choices but to SEO my wife's page! I have tried those basic setup but the result doesn't look good. Right now if we search "hong kong make up artist", her page is only at page 15 rank #3, which is terrible and I don't think anybody will click the result to page 15. I have to have a better tuning to make the page ranking higher.
To continue on the SEO article, please click on the "SEO" tag and look for my article.
Will keep posted of what I have done to make her page ranking higher.
Well, during this period, I have been to a lot of things. I have changed my jobs two times at least I believe? The first job was working on Java, Sybase Sql, very common languages as a developer. But now I m working as a MAINFRAME Developer! Sounds crazy eh!? MAINFRAME is totally new to me and I have to learn everything from bottom. Anyway
I will talk about this in another post. Today I want to talk about SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
So basically, what is SEO? When you have a page up on internet, you want people to go to your page right? Unless you want to keep your page private, you want your page to show up in google search result as highest rank as possible. SEO - the term means to optimize your page by tuning all the possible factors to make you page have a higher ranking. This is very important if you have an online business. By SEO (fine tuning your page), your page is expected to have an increased traffic, increased conversions, exposure to new markets and audiences etc.
Why am I talking about this today? Well, I have been facing so much difficulties when I am trying to promote my wife's page: Krace Makeup. I have tried to promote her page in Facebook, but not looking so well. If you haven't promote your page in Facebook before, I will let you know what is the problem. So basically, you create a fans page or community or whatever. After you have invited all your friends to your pages, you want some new audiences to join the page. The first thing that comes to my mind is: pay my money to Facebook. It works like this, you give an mount of money and the promotion date range and they will tell you the expected number of people will join your page. Sounds fair? Well, not really. It really depends on what is your page about. If you page talks about sport, I believe many people would like to join the page. If your going to promote a page like, makeup? Obviously, it is a little bit harder. So what Facebook will do to give you that expected number of people to like your page is that (this is my guess only), they hired certain amount of people to like your page in case the expected number of people cannot be reached. Why am I saying this? Every time I try to promote my page, I will narrow down the target: country = my country, gender = female etc. At the end there will be a number of people liked her Facebook page Krace Makeup, but most of them are OBVIOUSLY not my country people! I clicked inside of the person who liked her page and see if there is any mistake that Facebook has made, but I found that those people country is listed as the place of where my country is, but obviously they are not belong to my country, you can tell by check through all their page inside. So, Facebook advertising doesn't work. I have to think of another way to promote her page Krace Mak Makeup.
Another way that I have tried is paying Google money (Goolge Adv), but that doesn't work well either and the cost is even higher. Why is that? Because each of the click costs pretty high and most of the people just click around the websites by accident and they are not intended to check your website (by most of the cases). So you are actually paying many unwanted clicks.
So I have no choices but to SEO my wife's page! I have tried those basic setup but the result doesn't look good. Right now if we search "hong kong make up artist", her page is only at page 15 rank #3, which is terrible and I don't think anybody will click the result to page 15. I have to have a better tuning to make the page ranking higher.
To continue on the SEO article, please click on the "SEO" tag and look for my article.
Will keep posted of what I have done to make her page ranking higher.
2014/06/15
RedMi Note - User Experience
RedMi Note - is the China most famous brand XiaoMi's cellphone, which the phone price is incredibly cheap. You can get the phone with 999 RMB (Yuan) or somewhere around $1200HKD ($160 USD). The phone comes with Octa-core 1.4/1.7 GHz Cortex-A7, 2G ram, 13MP camera resolution and much more, you can check the full spec in here: RedMi - Full Spec
The price is just way too cheap as you can get Octa core and 2G ram for just USD 160. So is it perfect? I would say there are quite a lot of pros and cons:
FYI: I bought my RedMi in Hong Kong and RedMi is still not officially selling in here. My phone is a rooted version.
PROS:
- Nice screen with great resolution.
- Fast
- 13MP camera (quick reaction)
CONS:
(Jun 2014) - Even tho it is a 2G ram phone but when you start up the phone it only left with 6-700 MB memory.
(Jun 2014) - The phone is running so called "Android" but it doesn't come with Google Play Market. If you want to download apps you better use their app called "XiaoMi" Market: the reason is their OS is somewhat not really compatible with the apps in Google Play Market.
(Jun 2014) - If you are a Facebook lover then you would hate this phone. First, do not download the app in Goolge Play, download it in XiaoMi market. Second, even if you download the app from XiamMi Market, the Facebook app keep crashing when you are using it. (I guess this is because they did not spend time working on the Facebook apps or OS whatever as Facebook is not allowed to use in China).
(Jun 2014) - Want to use Google Map? You can download it, but the GPS is not working with it :D
What to do? Use the Chinese map called "AMap"! But this map only cover China and Hong Kong. And the GPS works VERY terribly. Actually there is a hack to make your phone to work in Google Map: you need to download an APK file (NetworkLocation.apk) (I am not responsible if this file harms to your phone or any of your personal data is being stolen), install it and then restart it. After the phone is restarted, click "Allow Permission" for Google popup.
(Jun 15 2014) - There is a system update today and I updated my phone OS. After it is done and restarted, it said my SD card is not working and urge me to format the card and I was like WHAT! I have not back it up yet! I tried to restart the phone and turn it back on and it says the same thing. Me then turn off the phone and take the sd card out and insert it back into the phone and start it up. Things look fine. So, do not format your sd card when it says there is an error!
So do I recommend using this phone? I would still say Yes, as this phone is just $1550 HKD (USD 160) with nice speed and resolution. The problems that I mentioned above could be fixed with some work. Sure if money is not an issue you should pick those big brand phone like SamSung or iPhone etc.
This post will keep updated!
The price is just way too cheap as you can get Octa core and 2G ram for just USD 160. So is it perfect? I would say there are quite a lot of pros and cons:
FYI: I bought my RedMi in Hong Kong and RedMi is still not officially selling in here. My phone is a rooted version.
PROS:
- Nice screen with great resolution.
- Fast
- 13MP camera (quick reaction)
CONS:
(Jun 2014) - Even tho it is a 2G ram phone but when you start up the phone it only left with 6-700 MB memory.
(Jun 2014) - The phone is running so called "Android" but it doesn't come with Google Play Market. If you want to download apps you better use their app called "XiaoMi" Market: the reason is their OS is somewhat not really compatible with the apps in Google Play Market.
(Jun 2014) - If you are a Facebook lover then you would hate this phone. First, do not download the app in Goolge Play, download it in XiaoMi market. Second, even if you download the app from XiamMi Market, the Facebook app keep crashing when you are using it. (I guess this is because they did not spend time working on the Facebook apps or OS whatever as Facebook is not allowed to use in China).
(Jun 2014) - Want to use Google Map? You can download it, but the GPS is not working with it :D
What to do? Use the Chinese map called "AMap"! But this map only cover China and Hong Kong. And the GPS works VERY terribly. Actually there is a hack to make your phone to work in Google Map: you need to download an APK file (NetworkLocation.apk) (I am not responsible if this file harms to your phone or any of your personal data is being stolen), install it and then restart it. After the phone is restarted, click "Allow Permission" for Google popup.
(Jun 15 2014) - There is a system update today and I updated my phone OS. After it is done and restarted, it said my SD card is not working and urge me to format the card and I was like WHAT! I have not back it up yet! I tried to restart the phone and turn it back on and it says the same thing. Me then turn off the phone and take the sd card out and insert it back into the phone and start it up. Things look fine. So, do not format your sd card when it says there is an error!
So do I recommend using this phone? I would still say Yes, as this phone is just $1550 HKD (USD 160) with nice speed and resolution. The problems that I mentioned above could be fixed with some work. Sure if money is not an issue you should pick those big brand phone like SamSung or iPhone etc.
This post will keep updated!
2014/04/22
How to install plugin for Joomla? (JOOMLA)
Joomla is one of the best CMS tool and the reason is that because there is a big community making lots of plugins that make your website look great with just a few clicks.
To install plugins, basically you have to download the plugin first, save it on your computer and install it.
Step 1: Go to Extension -> Extension Manager:
Step 2: locate your plugin file:
Step 3: Click "Unload & Install"
You have just installed the plugin!
Enjoy!
To install plugins, basically you have to download the plugin first, save it on your computer and install it.
Step 1: Go to Extension -> Extension Manager:
Step 2: locate your plugin file:
Step 3: Click "Unload & Install"
You have just installed the plugin!
Enjoy!
How to turn off caching in Joomla? (JOOMLA)
For some of the plugins you have to turn off caching in order to make it work perfectly, ie: Facebook Like and Share. To turn off caching in joomla, you have to follow the below steps:
Step 1: Go to System and select Global Configuration:
Step 2: Go to System Tab on the right hand side screen, scroll down and you will see "Cache *", choose "OFF- Caching disabled".
There you go! You have just disabled caching of your Joomla website!!
Enjoy!
Step 1: Go to System and select Global Configuration:
Step 2: Go to System Tab on the right hand side screen, scroll down and you will see "Cache *", choose "OFF- Caching disabled".
There you go! You have just disabled caching of your Joomla website!!
Enjoy!
How to clear cache? (Joomla)
How to clear cache? And what does cache do?
Cache is actually the data files that are retrieved from either database or anywhere else and store it on the server so that when users want to retrieve it again the server will just give them the cache and hence it will save the traffic time from server to database.
Then we we need to clear cache? Sometimes we have modified something from the source and would like to check if the content is updated. In this moment we have to clear cache in order to see the updated content.
Step to clear cache in Joomla:
Step 1:
Click System from menu.
Step 2:
Select the type of cache that you want to delete and click on the delete button as highlighted.
You have just cleared cache!
Enjoy!
Cache is actually the data files that are retrieved from either database or anywhere else and store it on the server so that when users want to retrieve it again the server will just give them the cache and hence it will save the traffic time from server to database.
Then we we need to clear cache? Sometimes we have modified something from the source and would like to check if the content is updated. In this moment we have to clear cache in order to see the updated content.
Step to clear cache in Joomla:
Step 1:
Click System from menu.
Step 2:
Select the type of cache that you want to delete and click on the delete button as highlighted.
You have just cleared cache!
Enjoy!
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