pics

Collections of photo found at this particular website. Some of the photos on the website are NSFW (Not Safe For Work).


now, that's cunning...


Septic truck









imagine blogging with those..




You trust CNN now?


Infaq at Pakistan







What's this? Highlight between x's to reveal answer
x candle wick x


lol

entertainment insidiously kills you from inside

Youtube cant be viewed in a Windows Mobile 5 (and I heard version 6 as well) which kinda sucks because iPhone can. At the moment, Youtube is redirecting its traffic to m.youtube.com, which converts their flash video into 3gp format that some pocket PC can play, albeit only a proportion of its massive video database being available for this (and poorer quality). But news have come through that a version 6.1 is on its way which can correct this serious flaw. In the meanwhile, while waiting for it to come out (don't know when) and for those who cant afford to upgrade at the moment (like me), one can try these steps: (taken from WMexperts)

1. Install TCPMP player (version o.72RC1). Uninstall previous version if there is one.
2. Install FlashVideoBundle.cab (version 1.4.3) at the same directory folder as TCPMP
3. Soft reset
4. When surfing Youtube, it will redirect to m.youtube.com as described previously. just scroll to the bottom and there is link for "classic view" which will return you to the original Youtube
5. What the software does is it will ask whether to view, save or link the video. Clicking on 'view' will automatically play the video in the TCPMP player which will open automatically and stream the video.

Recent test showed disappointing quality (=lots of lag), may be attributable to my crappy broadband at the moment.

Anyway, another foray in the net had me stumbled upon some site offering streaming video of tv shows (mostly American):
videohybrid.com
alloftv.net
megavideo.com
They beat waiting for torrent to finish downloading. Does watching streaming TV shows considered pirating? Its free on TV anyway...Oh, and apparently the word "kinda" is a proper word. Never knew that it is a formally recognised colloquial term.

Filling my time

I'm stuck at home for these couple of days, still trying to get accustomed to Malaysian heat. A few minutes outside and I'm drenched in my own sweat. A bit hyperbolic I must say, but it is hot. So, I used up my time at home clearing the clutters I accumulate in my trusty 4 year old laptop. So, I stumbled upon a couple of Internet bookmarks I kept aside for future reading/browsing and I'll just place it here so that if I get bored I can go through them:

Sneaker Freaker Magazine - Newsflash - GUIDE TO LACING

bush hid the facts - Google Search

Dietwater

Blogger: Bits & Pieces - Post a Comment

http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/DSForm.asp

YouTube Video Download Tool

i'm Back yeaah

After a near-2-months hiatus, I'm finally back. Back from my Ramadhan sabbatical, and a 3200 km (and a cool NZD 1k) journey of North Island. The photo above is taken at Tongariro National Park, a dual-listed World Heritage Site (nature and culture - latter is particularly due to its sacred ties to Maori beliefs). At the top left, which is unfortunately cut, is Mt Ruapehu, one of three active volcanoes in NZ, which, if Allah permits, I intend to return to and hike up there....

Camels

Bits and pieces

I came across this blog which compiles funny photos, vids, stories, qoutes etc. URL: http://bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com/ Examples:

Is this a problem?


Hunting:

A father and son went hunting together for the first time.

The father said, "Stay here and be very QUIET. I'll be across the field." A few minutes later, the father heard a blood curdling scream and ran back to his son.

"What's wrong?" the father asked. "I told you to be quiet."

The son answered, "Look, I was quiet when the snake slithered across my feet. I was quiet when the bear breathed down my neck.

But when the two squirrels crawled up my pant legs and said, 'Should we eat them here or take them with us?'

"I guess I just panicked...."

Supersize me

A fortnight ago, I watched this Academy Award-nominated documentary, SuperSize Me, in which a healthy 32-year old man went on a 30-day McDonald binge to see if such diet would be detrimental to health. The documentary was largely inspired by a lawsuit from 2 obese teenage girls against McDonald for causing their obesity problem. More info at IMDB and wikipedia. The movie got me wondering about the prevalence of obesity and cardiovascular (CVS) disease in Malaysia. Here is what I found:

1. In 2005, CVS disease is the 4th (7.07%, 130,965 cases) most common reason for hospitalisation. It is 2nd (14.31%, 5668 cases) most common cause of death in hospitals. [1]
2. An observational study published in 2007 found that overall national prevalence of obesity among Malaysians aged 15 years old and above was 11.7% (95% CI = 11.1 - 12.4%). The prevalence of obesity was significantly higher in females (13.8%) as compared to 9.6% in males (p<>= 18 years old has markedly increased by 280% since the last National Health and Morbidity Survey in 1996. [2]
3. A review in 2002 found that the prevalence of obesity was clearly greater in women than in men. In women, obesity rates were higher in Indian and Malay women than in Chinese women, while in men the Chinese recorded the highest obesity prevalence followed by the Malay and Indians. Studies on normal healthy subjects indicated that the energy intake of Indians was significantly lower than that of other ethnic groups. In women, Malays recorded a significantly higher energy intake than the other groups. Urban male subjects consumed significantly more energy than their rural counterparts, but this was not the case in women. In both men and women, fat intakes (%) were significantly higher in Chinese and urban subjects. Men were moderately active with the exception of the Dayaks. Chinese women were considerably less active than Chinese men. Chinese and Dayak women were less active than Malay and Indian women. The escalation of obesity, once thought to be an urban phenomenon, has now spread to the rural population at an alarming rate. [3]

There's more papers out there but I couldn't be bothered reading more. Conclusion: Obesity and CVS is a problem in Malaysia. Duh.

---------
[1] MOH (2006) Health Facts 2005 pamphlet
[2]Rampal L, Rampal S, Khor GL et al (2007) A national study on the prevalence of obesity among 16,127 Malaysians Asia Pac J Clin Nutr 2007;16(3):561-3
[3] Ismail MN, Chee SS, Nawawi H, Yusoff K, Lim TO, James WP (2002) Obesity in Malaysia Obes Rev 2002 Aug ;3(3):203-8

no idea for a topic

Its midnight right now in Christchurch and I am winding down to go to sleep, waiting for my electric toothbrush to be recharged. Tomorrow, OSCE, 2nd last for the year, yippee and this one will make or break my year so everyone pray for my success..please. And on Friday, I have this case presentation but here I am with no case. My house surgeon decided to do the topic I was planning to present. curse her..ahahaha...its about malignant meningitis anyway. Presented with excruciating headache and neck pain associated with sweating during attacks. MRI and MRA of the head and neck showed no abnormalities and so my team were quite puzzled by the presentation. Lumbar puncture were performed and was subsequently found to have neoplastic cells. Subsequent CT was made and showed a subtle oesophageal carcinoma. The man deteriorated fast, and after 10 days since he presented with the headache, he passed away and became the 2nd person to die while under management of the doctors I am attached with.

just taking a breather from studying and I thought of experimenting putting a youtube vid here.


so it works. its a nice song i used to like ages ago and stumbled upon just a few day ago. "Everybody's Free (to wear suncsreen)" by Baz Luhrmman. It did reach #1 in the UK charts back in '99. More info

Blunders?

Paying through the nose for tools

So on the news today was the revelation of how the Ministry of Youth and Sports paid RM 8.39mil more than the market price for equipments. One of the items were screwdrivers, which retailed at RM 40 was brought for RM 225! Other mishaps identified:
1. There was no evidence that any effort in reducing the prices were made.
2. Unauthorised person managed to approve funding
3. A supplier managed to get an extra RM 1.25mil compared to another supplier for supplying identical equipments.

More news:

Spend, Spend and Overspend

Ahh, so Ministry of Youth and Sports weren't alone in this. In fact, I could safely say this sort of corruptions blunders have happened in the past. Yet it continue to be perpetrated. Why? Some say attitudes/immorality - that some government officials up there were not at all concerned that this money belong the taxpayers. Its not their money, so what eh. Just spend it. We can make our friends rich while we are at it.
Others may point out to lack of accountability. Will there be any repercussions, ie someone get the sack or better jail. Past experience teach me there won't but then again the time is close to election so I hope the government get cracking and clean up their acts like they usually do once every 4-5 years. :D

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 ...

holiday

A much needed break is coming to an end. Managed to squeeze in a day of snowboarding and sightseeing in Akaroa in an otherwise an unremarkable 1 week of holiday. I need to study anyway after months of slacking off and get that Maori assignment out of the way. For years I was the diligent type, studying consistently through out the year, churning out good results when exams come. But in recent 2 years, I thought, screw that. Friends and classmates around me has managed to get as good result as me just by 'last minute cramming' and I adopted that approach. Year 2 was fine. Year 3 was fine too. Then, this year came and finally I felt the repercussion of the 2 years of slacking. I was behind in group discussion and had to struggle to keep in pace with my classmates and assignments. Long has it been since I felt this way. Maybe never perhaps..And so it dawns on me, I am cursed to be the diligent type in order to succeed. Success has it price, so cliche yet so true.
Is the photo cool or what? See the reflection on my goggle..

im back wohooo

Finally, I have recovered. I was struck down by organism small enough that microscopes can't see them. Most people would call my previous 3 day experience a 'cold'. It all started with a sore throat at the endocrine clinic leading up to cough at the lectures then a fever after bedside teaching followed by chills early evening and culminates with headache and lethargy later on. What makes it worse was the timing. I was ordered to finish a textbook during this week and have to hand in my patient report on Friday. The report is easy peasy to get a passing mark but my consultant want a distinction from me, so he wanted a report of a textbook standard. He could be just fooling around when he said that to me, but I have to be safe. Taxpayers money is at stake. hahaha. More stress to weaken my immune system.

GP

Time flies and another run is coming to an end. GP run was interesting and it did gave me quite valuable insight on the workings of GPs in NZ. It does cast a stark difference between GP practice in Malaysia and NZ. The former is more impersonal, detached and more of a quick-fix approach while the latter tends to be the opposite. Which one is better? I dont know. Circumstances are different for both countries. NZ is only 4 mil people compared to 25 mil of Msia, which translates to different time and resource pressures. But anecdotal experience suggest the NZ approach brings out better patient satisfaction and this measure is perhaps the best in demonstrating which system is better.

bored

In the highly unlikely scenario where someone would have read and remembered anything from this blog, you may recall that I blogged about how my time managamenet was f****d messed up. Then one day an old friend asked me, do you still play video games? Sheepishly I replied yes. Because in that instance I remembered how I vowed to cut down the games yet i did the reverse. It got me thinking, ' now that is the culprit behind my bad time management'. At least one of them anyway. So, the instance I got back home, I flicked on the laptop and uninstall my games one-by-one until there was one. Dota/WC3 remains. Its a multiplayer game anyway so I figured it wouldn't be that often I can play that game. So 1 day later, I suddenly found myself with ample of free time. How boring was my life, a life entertained by computer games and when that is gone I find myself bored because no computer games to keep me entertained. Ive grown dependent on it I guess. A substitute hobby need to be found. Movies, books, arts, writing is the way for me I guess. Getting back in da'wah field would be good too (well its a must actually hehe). Having said all this, is going cold turkey good or should i had eased it off gradually? We'll see. Stay tune.

Lonely

Hahaha. Looks like Im the only one visiting this blog. Sooo lonely. I am a quiet guy so it is a consequent of that I suppose. Yet I hate being lonely. Damn. What the f**** Im blabbin about, being soppy and sh**. I will look back at this entry and would think, damnnn, I need to delete this.

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

Regression

I'm not that busy. Just poor time management. Then, it suddenly struck me, I wasn't like this back in college, nor was in high school. Always got my assignment done, prepared well for tests and yet still manage to nick in time for soccer, games and minor socialising. I thought, with age and experience, there's always one way to go, that is improvement. But yet, here I am, regress to a point where I live like I was in lower high school years. Indulged in feeble entertainment such computer games, TV series and excessive soccer, I found myself lacking in areas I should be investing more time in. Academically mediocre when distinction should be aimed for, disengagement in da'wah when it is fard, distant when socialising is better, these are the norms for me for the past year. So, this is like a wake up call for me. Change and be like a 23 year old Muslim should be.
As I am keying in this post, my mind sort of wandered on how did I regress like this. But, then I figured, its better if I pondered on how I was able to function at higher level before. And the first thing that came to my mind was the effect of people around me. I always had people who would push me, or rather inspire me. Friends at school or my parent, they were there and the inspiration could be subtle, but it worked. I guess here in NZ, I have grown out my friends here and have got used to them to be no longer inspired. No offense. But then again, my social circle for the past 2-3 years here have been rather limited. Since I would be stuck like this for the next 2 years, an alternative must be reached, though I do think friends influence is only one component of the factor of changes. A good alternative I reckoned is books/reading material. Quran will always be the best bet. And I guess, returning to read books on deen is the way too.

useless post

Transformers rockk. awesome movie.

idle

Dah jadi balik. Kejap semangat nak blog, kejap tak.