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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Gmail: Personal Nerve Center

I only use Gmail as email and file storage. Only two functions.

But, when I read this, WOW. The link discuss on how to turn your Gmail into a center for almost common activities on the Internet. This is the gist of the article.
  • How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
  • How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
  • How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
  • How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal + GTalk + iMified)
  • How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)
Impressive :).

Monday, February 26, 2007

analysing data

I will be finishing my data collection this week and there are few (actually there are so many) patients that I need to catch up with. For my research, I need to see the patients twice for review and at the moment, the numbers of review is not that great. The percentage of loss to follow up is something that I need to discuss with my supervisor and the statistician.

Just to state here, my n1>500 yet for review, n2<200. It is something that has been bothering me lately. Anyway, expect me to be busy with all those statistic concepts and writing up the project as well. My supervisor will be going to India for 3 months by end of March. She expects me to give her something that should look like a final draft before that. Hopefully, I will be able to achieve this task...

Sunday, February 25, 2007

cool pictures

part of my habit is to randomly bloghopping. And the focus of today is to see few of the best photoblogs around the world. All of those site are elegant and the pictures are marvelous. I wish I can shoot that kind of pictures.

check this picture. Great composition of lighting and I don't know whether this picture has been edited or not, but the final effect is simply great.

this one is a good close-up picture.

this picture shows an excellent shot of waves hitting the rock. Lovely

If you would like to see more photoblogs, check the list here. Nice B).

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Laptop dissection

In the last few weeks, my laptop keep experiencing overheating problem. The fan always running at maximum and I thought this could be attributed to the hot weather. Then, few days ago, a dialog box pop up in the screen and mentioned that the laptop has been experiencing overheating problem and need to be shut down.

I guess that this must be caused by the heatsink in the laptop. The heatsink must have accumulated lots of dust since I have been using the laptop for more than 3 years now. I think it is a common problem for any laptop that has been used for a long time.

Google for the methods to open the laptop and I memorized the steps involved. Bear in mind that by doing this, you could invalidate the laptop warranty but since my warranty has already has expired B), I guess this is my only option [another option is to go to the computer shop but I did not want to pay ;)].

The first step is to back up all of the data. Next, I find the section where the heatsink and CPU are and open it using a Philip screwdriver. Throughout the whole process, I have to be careful of the electrostatic charge since it can damage any delicate electronics inside.


The picture above shows where is the CPU and the fan inside the laptop. The fan is on the right and the processor is on the left. You can see the dust next to the fan. Next, I removed the fan....and I found the culprit. No wonder my laptop is overheated. The dust has already blocked the airflow.

I cleaned the heatsink using various methods. After 10 minutes, the dust are gone. Compare the picture above and below :).



The whole procedure took about 15 minutes without counting the time spend for data backup. By cleaning the dust, the problem went away and hopefully I did not have to do this dissection again in the near future.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

update

I have not updated this blog for almost 5 days now. A bit busy with data analysis and all those statistic figures. My data collection will be finished hopefully by the end of this February. I am still working hard to get as many patients as possible eventhough the current sample size should more than enough :).

feed...hmm, I will check the layout later. Probably it is something to do with atom.xml


Thursday, February 01, 2007

find ways to become closer

O YOU who have attained to faith! Remain conscious of God, and seek to come closer unto Him, and strive hard in His cause, so that you might attain to a happy state.
[al-Maidah:35]