random ramblings + SGS

I woke up this morning around noon-ish. Hey, I had a late night last night. I watched Man United get overran in midfield as the lack of pace from scholes and carrick got exposed too much. Anyway, looked at my phone, which was upgraded with Darky ROM 9.5 Steel Blue theme (more below), and there was a voice mail. Phoned it. "Unfortunately both your outgoing and incoming flights to Kuala Lumpur has been cancelled." What?! How could Singaporeairline do that? So, apparently they decided to cut down flight numbers to Christchurch and no longer will fly on those dates. $%$&!@ Long story short, I contacted the travel agency, and fortunately they can rearrange the flights, however via Auckland, which is an additional stop, and longer travelling time, but I still arrive on the same day which is the crucial part. But still, I wonder if I could be compensated for this. The main reason I choose them was the direct flight factor. Anybody had an experience getting compensation from this sort of things? A free upgrade to Business class would be nice :D

So, last night, the thing that kept me awake was my phone (samsung galaxy S I9000). I decided to upgrade Darky ROM 9.0 to Darky ROM 9.5 and go a little bit further adding Steel Blue theme. Well, what happen was, I flashed the wrong theme (steel blue 4.0) and it just bricked my phone. It was stuck at booting screen. Luckily, Odin rescued me, reflashed the phone & now it looked great & still as fast as before. If you're noob than all these will sound gibberish. Here's the run down:

(1) Samsung galaxy s is an awesome phone. Listed as #2 as top gadget of 2010 by the Time magazine behind the iPad (which means it was rated better than iPhone 4). It uses android operating system.

(2) Heres an article describing what ROM is.

(3) The stock ROM for SGS is laggy. When I didnt know about this custom ROM thingy, I was disappointed with the phone. I wondered how it got those high ratings. I previously owned an Omnia and found that phone quite disappointing. Then my mate mentioned about this. And luckily, somebody posted on facebook about darky's rom. Gave it a try and just wow. Blazingly fast. I would definitely recommend this phone now. SGS 2 is coming out soon too, wider, thinner, lighter, better display!

(4) Moral of the story: If you cant spend the time or willing to learn to tweak your phone, then iphone is for you. Otherwise, android is so much superior imo as the potential to customize ur phone at your will is just vast.

Poster

My first "publication". I didn't manage to go to Gold Coast to the conference. Too costly, somebody else presented it. I have not heard from him how it went. The original looks better and had no watermark at the bottom left corner. The image above had quality reduced again and again as the original was in pdf format & I wanted the image size less than 1mb (a bit stingy I know). I'm a bit late to catch up on Maher Zain, considering he had the best selling album in Malaysia for 2010, but the flurry of facebook post on him from his recent concert back home made me check his music out, & alhmadulillah its quite good IMO. I totally relate to the lyrics and messages in his nasheeds. It's a good alternative to the music I usually listen, hopefully it helps me change my habits, and hopefully I would somehow return to dakwah & good deeds. I pray to Allah for guidance. Here is a sample (so far my fav):

Summer idle

On a totally different note, in overcoming my summer idleness, I tried watching/catching up on my vast collections of downloaded movies/documentaries. First 3 lined up were: BBC's Islamic history of Europe, Yvonne Project, and Fox's Conspiracy theory: Did we land on the moon? All these documentaries were old (downloaded 3 years ago) but their content, IMO, remain relevant today. Islamic history of Europe detailed the impact of Islam on Europe and how it shaped Europe today. It also showed brief history of Muslim settlement during Abbassid dynasty in Spain and Sicilly and the impact they have on Europe. Yvonne Project on the other hand is an hour-and-a-half lecture given by Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist captured by Taliban during American invasion of Afghanistan. She talked about her encounter with Taliban and how she ended up as a Muslim after the ordeal. I definitely recommend these 2 documentaries to broaden your perspective. The third documentaries is more sensationalism than exact documentary, IMO. It is Fox material anyway. It proposed that US never did made moon landings and arguements were made to prove this. They had a NASA spokeman, who did a crap job IMO, to counter these arguements. Whether he was trying to convince people of a lie or whether he was just crap at explaining, one thing for sure, he made the whole documentary more convincing of US never did land on the moon. 

This is how you do it

The diagram should be self-explanatory and if you click on it, it will lead to more raya @ Chch 2008 photos. It doesn't seem to stop huh? Even with exams looming around the corner. This open house was preceded with Solat hajat in conjunction with the oncoming exam held primarily for Canterbury Uni students. I crashed in because of the free food. Tazkirah given that night by the usual person in Chch (Napi) was centered around the 1st habit of '7 habits of higly effective people' authored by Stephen Covey. That Covey chap is an interesting guy. He was (or still is) a Christian preacher who wanted to convey his messages and values. He realised that in this secular age, anything with religious connotation will have its market restricted or be negatively perceived. Hence, he repackages the information into a "secular" form and wrote what became a best-seller book. I've read the book and it doesn't contain any subliminal or frank messages on Christianity - the book is just on common and good senses written in a coherent, easily understood and well structured manner. To be continued ----- 

Satay recipe

Tried cooking satay for ifthar today. Here's the recipe:

1 kg boneless chicken
1 kg topside beef
2 jar of Ayam brand satay sauce (lol)

Cut meat into cubes or strip and marinate with 1 jar of satay sauce overnight. Then skewer meat into soaked bamboo sticks. Grill away. I grilled using oven grill set at 300 degrees for 5 minutes before turning over and then another 5 minutes. The other jar of satay sauce is used as a errr, sauce. Result:

This photo shows what ideally the satay should turn out. Mine: doesn't look as good and the meat weren't that tasty - 4 factors to blame: (1) meat wasn't really defrosted when it was put out for marination, (2) not enough marinate sauce, (3) oven grilled, instead of bbq grill as additional oil dab can be used in the latter option, and (4) it was cold when I ate it. 

Google Chrome (Updated)

A new browser in town and I gave it a go. When compared to IE7, Google Chrome loads pages faster, looks cooler and has some nifty functions not available to its rival. I like the customizable tab (look better too) and the highlight-then-right-click-and-search function. Open source means third party apps will be available soon ala Firefox. But comparing it with Firefox 3, no much difference between the two, even the functions are the same. Mozilla is after all under Google. In addition, Chrome has issues with securities, but I don't have details on that so nothing I could elaborate there.

Update: Apparently, IE 8 beta version is already out and I tried it. Still more sluggish than Chrome when tested by comparing the loading time of an important website - Soccernet.com. What caught my eye with IE 8 is the built-in accelerator that allows you to do stuffs to highlighted stuff. For example, you highlight the word 'Shah Alam', click the accelerator logo on it, then you can, say, either search 'Shah Alam' in YouTube or in Google map. At this moment, I'm sticking to Chrome mainly because speed matters for me. I'm sure accelerator for Chrome would come out soon as a third party app or when the final version of Chrome is out. My hunch is that the accelerator was based on firefox third-party app..  

Into the wild

This entry contains spoiler of the movie Into the Wild (2007). A brief synopsis first: Based on true events of Chris McCandless, who after graduating from college at the age of 24, donated all his college funds to charity, left his family and set off to live in the Alaskan wilderness. He hailed from an affluent suburban family, which nevertheless is a disharmonious one and is the reason extrapolated by the moviemaker as why the person hated the society he is in and as to why he had wanted to live self-sufficiently in the Alaskan wilderness. This reason is perhaps accentuated by the influence of the works of Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau and Jack London, which some say shaped his ascetic personality. The movie portrays his journey, the encounters he met along the way and some explanation of the reasons of his journey. I wouldn't say this movie a classic, but the story of this man did intrigued me somewhat. His ascetic personality is what made me intrigued at a time when I myself are so indulged in my own whims and is searching for a revelation to conquer it. However, it has to be said that his measure was extreme and that pure asceticism is not what is ordained in Islam. To borrow the words of Sayyid Abul A'La Maududi, a great thinker of Islamic revivalism in his book ethical viewpoint of Islam: "this (ascetic) attitude is in radical violation of the entire scheme of nature and is virtual revolt against the Will of God as immanent of His Creation. The greatest harm done to humanity by this wrong concept is that it has removed from practical life some of those individuals whom God had endowed with high moral qualities, thus leaving the field or worldly affairs mostly for the persons of inferior moral calibre." What was ordained in Islam is moderation and what it is that a man to do and don't is clearly written. My problem then is due of something else...

On another note, the idea of secluding oneself either to escape from society that has indulge itself in vices or out of the pursue of internal peace is not new. It was one of the practice of sufism, known as khalwa, and it was based on the fact that Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) secluded himself from the idolatrous society of pagan Meccans. However, one must remember that this occurred prior to his prophethood and such is not considered a sunnah.

PDA

It seems like my blog is turning to be a private diary of some sort, not close to what I envisage it to be, a medium to share my knowledge with some good well researched discussion on matters that mattered. And so, this entry is hoped to be the first of many that will follow...

Those rare few who have followed this blog might remembered my PDA-phone review. So after several months of usage, I have came across several PDA software that was and still is useful for me as a medical students:

1. iSilo: an e-book reader with useful functions such as search capability and hyperlinks jump. Puts your thick humongous textbook in your palm. This is easy to use and read once u get the hang of reading from small LCD screen and lots and lots of scrolling. Those drawbacks are its main con I guess but it is very handy when you need to check your facts when on the wards and no computer in the vicinity. It is not free though but cheap at 12 USD. I have found various e-books out there in the Internet, the best remains Harrison Principle of Med 16th Ed found on torrent.

2. Skyscape: Is not a software but a company who develops medical software for PDA. I've tried '5-minute consult' which one of the function helps list your DDx. I haven't had a full go at this software, since I have not actually found a working cracked version yet :D. But the software put out by this company is getting rave reviews in forums so I'm guessing it's worth a try. I will try this software again next holiday.

3. C4PDA: Not a software but website. just add www. and .com as prefix and suffix respectively for the URL. I won't say much about this website because its ...

bandwidth eater

Everybody should think YouTube is great. It's now my source of pirated music. A firefox plugin called videodownloader and a software called flvsplitter then allowed me to download the videos and be played with windows media player along with files of other format. So thats pretty cool. But if you have just got an mp3 player installed in your car, they wont play flv and all your latest musics needed to be converted to mp3. Flv to mp3 converter? I found an online version: vixy.net Paste url of the video on vixy.net, it then convert the video to mp3 and downloads to your PC. Cool eh. This is a pretty long entry just to say: check this website out. haha

O2 Atom Pure

Enough of the random ramblings. I will start some serious post with this review of the newly acquired O2 Atom Pure. After 4 years of reliable service from iPaq 1930, I finally decided to upgrade to the pdaphone when my handphone of 2 years, Nokia 6610i finally succumbed to the unintentional abuse I inflicted upon it. I was pretty fed up of carrying both phone and pda all this while, so pdaphone was the logical upgrade. What I was particularly looking for in a pdaphone is that it must have Wifi capability and is compact enough to actually fit into a pocket. It must also fit my meagre budget of NZD 500. So, after some searching, 2 fit the descriptions: O2 Atom and iMate K-Jam. O2 atom were the slimmer version so that give it the nod for the purchase.

Pros: It is really compact. The smallest pdaphone on the market at the moment. And no more carrying a separate handphone and pda.

Cons: Vibration can be sometime annoying because it vibrates rather loudly and last quite a while. Not good when you are in occasions such in the middle of lecture. Text messaging is slower due to lack of keypad/keyboard. Windows Mobile 5 can't access certain features quickly like a handphone menu.

I found text messaging quite troublesome with the software given. One way I got around that problem is installing a third party software, SPB Full Screen Keyboard. It turns the whole screen into a qwerty keyboard, and you can just use your fingers instead of that fiddly stylus to key in texts. In fact, to get the most out of your pdaphone, I suggest installing the following software:

SPB Mobile Shell: Converts Win Mobile 5 into easily accessible handphone-like menu and enable you to use the pda-phone with one hand, just like normal handphone.

Pocket Islam: Includes prayer schedule, Quran with complete tashkil, Hijra calendar, qibla direction. Its free too.

SBSH PocketBreeze: A today plug-in that displays multiple appointments on the today screen. Also display tasks, notes, and messages.