preparation

I have my oral presentation tomorrow. I attend today's presentation by fellow AMS students. The examiner like to ask unexpected questions. Seems a bit scary though. Hopefully all goes well tomorrow...

ebay (updated)

I rarely used ebay to buy stuff. In fact, if you check my profile, there is not a single star beside it :).

I only use ebay when I would like to find important stuff in a cheap price. The previous item I bought on ebay was electronic stuff. For the past few weeks I have been busy writing thesis, learning about blogger xml and looking some stuff on ebay. Finally, I found what I'm looking for on ebay yesterday and won it easily. There were no other bidders at that time. This is the most expensive stuff I bought on ebay and probably will be used for several years. I have to allocate some money for its maintenance and getting some accessories to complete it.




What is that thing I bought on ebay? It is a car :D.

Update: added pictures

Pulitzer Prize Winners 2007

A journey of Derek and his mother. This pictures won the famous Pulitzer Prize for Photography. I watched their journey till the end and finally understand why this pictures become the winner.

The Journey begins Click next to see their progress. My only advice is to be prepared with tissues...

From HTML, CSS to XML

The new version of Blogger used different language from its previous version. In the past, the template is based on HTML and CSS. The new version of Blogger incorporate XML as part of its layout.

Thus, for someone like me who customised the blog template.....I need to understand the intricacies of XML. It is totally different from HTML and CSS and all the Blogger widgets are based on XML. I would like to upgrade the current template to the new XML-based layout. I think that will take some time as the first step (rate-limiting step) demand the thorough understanding of XML.

Perhaps I should just choose any of the available template on Blogger....

draft of AMS thesis

Alhamdulillah, I've managed to complete my draft for the thesis. It is still shorter than what it supposed to be. I am already out of idea on increasing the number of words :). Thus, I choose to send it to the supervisor and hopefully will receive feedback ASAP.

I have terrible headache in the past few days of doing extensive literature review. I think I read too many medical journals and the number of references in the draft is 80. But, I read more than that actually....perhaps 200.....

The advantage on writing long assigment is that this provide me a good training for touch typing. I am still not fast enough in typing...

till then...bye

Google cartoons

Taking a break from the project...here is what I found on the net today. A collection of cartoons about Google :). Here are part of the pictures on the link.

Part 1
Part 2



This picture made me laugh. Reminds me of the ring :P

Hamad Darwish's wallpapers

My previous wallpapers was explained in this entry. My current wallpaper is the one below :). I decided to use this picture as a resulf of my internet surfing today. This photo was taken by Hamad Darwish. He is one of the photographers that has been asked by Microsoft to shoot pictures which will be used as wallpapers in Windows Vista. Two of his pictures are chosen to be in Windows Vista. This picture is a part of a zip file which can be download from his website. Cool and elegant pictures. Seeing this kind of pictures made me wish that I have a D-SLR camera.

For more amazing pictures, please check his Flickr. You wont be dissappointed B).

Favourite Firefox extensions

Since I am busy writing the thesis, the idea of writing an entry in this blog remains blur and empty. Thus, I will simply list down my favourite Firefox extensions (add-ons) added with my own comments :).

Tab Mix plus. A good extension to further enhance your tab-browsing experience. It has a lot of options for customization and to tell you the truth, I am still exploring the options.

Video Downloader. A famous extensions for you to download the video from Youtube and the Tube's clone ;). The video will be downloaded in .flv format and you need either to install FLV player or use VLC. Personally, I used VLC since it is able to read a lot of media format.

IE tab. Yeah, I know. Why need to use IE when most of the time you used Firefox. Apparently, there are certain websites that forced you to use IE. This extension will help you to switch the browser with just a click.

McAfee SiteAdvisor. This extension will give you the safety ratings for almost every websites on the net. If you search using google, yahoo or msn, this extension will give colour-coded rating to advise you whether the link is safe or dangerous or unknown. By using this extension, it will at least keep you away from virus, adwares, spywares or anything dangerous that might harm your computer.

Personal Menu. This is a nice extension that helps you to customise the menu. If you rarely click "file, edit, view, history" menu at the top of Firefox, this will help you to rearrange the menu. It can also increase the space for viewing the web. If you decide to install this extension, ask me if you encounter any trouble :).

Scrapbook. This extension helps you to save webpages faster. I used this extension to save digital books on the web. By using this extension, you read the webpage offline.

Web Developer. I am interested in the web development and this extension helps me a lot on developing this blog. It help you to dissect the page source, validate the websites etc. There are a lof of useful functions for someone who is interested in the development of a website :).

Is there any Firefox extension that you can suggest to me? :)

hilarious

Check this link. If you never study for your exam, this might give you an idea on how to answer the questions :D

p/s: I like the story of the elephant.

topic sentence

Right now, I'm in the phase of increasing the length of my writing for the project. It will be good if I can write as much as 60-80 pages :). Hopefully it is not that verbose. It took some time for me to write a new paragraph because of the pattern I used so far.

I begin every paragraph with a topic sentence. This phrase refers to a sentence that summarised the whole paragraph. So, the first sentence summarised the whole paragraph and the following sentences explaining the idea. Most of the time, the sentences that followed the topic sentence were quoted from medical journals since I'm very cautious of any form of plagiarism.

To quote something from a medical journal requires extensive literature review (read: need to read a lot of medical journals). I've just realised that my literature review so far has barely meet my own requirement. I am writing and doing the literature review both at the same time. Hence, spends a lot of time in front of the computer.

While writing a new paragraph, I have to ensure that the paragraph fits the whole picture. I mean that it will follows the order and does not seem too chaotic. This is one of the challenges writing a looooong essay.

Ok. Enough of my rant now. Should continue my unfinished task....

hadith of the day

Jarir b. Abdullah reported that some desert Arabs clad in woollen clothes came to Allaah's Messenger (sallAllaahu alayhi wa sallam). He saw them in sad plight as they had been hard pressed by need. He (the Prophet) exhorted people to give charity, but they showed some reluctance until (signs) of anger could be seen on his face. Then a person from the Ansar came with a purse containing silver. Then came another person and then other persons followed them in succession until signs of happiness could be seen on his (sacred) face. Thereupon Allaah's Messenger (sallAllaahu alayhi wa sallam) said: He who introduced some good practice in Islam which was followed after him (by people) he would be assured of reward like one who followed it, without their rewards being diminished in any respect. And he who introduced some evil practice in Islam which had been followed subsequently (by others), he would be required to bear the burden like that of one who followed this (evil practice) without their's being diminished in any respect.

[Sahih Muslim, Book 34: Hadith no 6466]

Perodua Kelisa = worst car in the world????

TOP Gear host Jeremy Clarkson has offended Malaysians with his latest stunt on the cult automotive show.

In the latest episode of the show in the UK, Clarkson labelled one of the country's cars the "worst in the world" and "unimaginative junk, with no soul, no flair and no passion".

from here

If you click at the link, the is an attached Youtube video showing how he destroyed a Perodua Kelisa using explosives.

tracking visitors in Google Analytics

I have another blog at efx2.com. That blog is primarily used for commenting at efx2 blogs. I have put Google Analytics code in the blog since last year and I am able to detect who is visiting the blog.

There are a lot of features in this application. I will show you how to combine several features together. First, click marketing optimization under All reports. Then click visitor segment performace and after that, please click on referring source.

Google Analytics will show you how the visitors found the website either through search engine, links from another website or direct link from the computer. The picture above shows my statistics on the blog at efx2.com.

Click on the double arrow that pointing upwards on any of the source. For example, I have clicked on the double arrow next to (direct)[(none)]. A box (I don't know the appropriate term for this one though) will appear next to the double arrow. Click on cross segment performance. Another box will appear and this will list several options for you to combine several features. If you would like to know which countries the visitors came from, click country and in my case, I will click city.

After that, a new page will reload and shows you the appropriate statistic. In my case, between 29th March 2007 and 4th April 2007, there were 12 direct visits from North Clayton, 4 visits from Melbourne, 2 from Dingley and 1 from Camberwell B).

You can also adjust the date range if you want to find out specific visitors on each day. Just click the calendar under the date range.

This post was inspired after reading this entry :)

p/s: Wrote this entry after taking a break from analysing data for my thesis ;)

writing a thesis

This is the task that occupied me most of the time now. There are few things that I need to improve on my draft. I need to use logistic regression instead of multiple regression for my data. In simple English, I need to redo my data analysis :).

The official date of submitting the thesis is on 18th May but before that, every AMS students need to prepare a full draft by 23rd April to be submitted to their supervisor. That is less than a month from today.

Besides that, I need to prepare for my oral presentation. Hopefully the audience will not ask difficult questions. For that, I need to finish writing the thesis first.

Hadith of the day

Narrated Abu Huraira:

I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "My example and the example of the people is that of a man who made a fire, and when it lighted what was around it, Moths and other insects started falling into the fire. The man tried (his best) to prevent them, (from falling in the fire) but they overpowered him and rushed into the fire. The Prophet added: Now, similarly, I take hold of the knots at your waist (belts) to prevent you from falling into the Fire, but you insist on falling into it."

[Sahih Bukhari, Book 76: Hadith no 490]