Another Blog! Visit me there!

@ I'm back to my other blog at WordPress~!

Dr Haisook's Brain Grooves
http://drhaisook.wordpress.com/

Please visit me there! and don't forget to leave a msg!

Windows Live Mail Beta

@ I've switched to Windows Live Mail today, which is in a beta condition. The applet is really fast. So fast. As if you're viewing emails in Outlook. There are a couple of nice things too, like right-clicking on email titles for more options, hiding attachments and disabling links for unknown/untrusted emails until you choose to view them. Pretty neat.

If you live in U.S., U. K., Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Japan, France, China, Canada, or Australia, you'll find a SIGN UP green banner at the top left of your hotmail inbox page. If you reside in a country that is not listed here, you cannot try Windows Live Mail at present.

Alternative link

@ Linkin Park's My December

This is my December
This is my time of the year
This is my December
This is all so clear
This is my December
This is my snow covered home
This is my December
This is me alone

And I give it all away...
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away...
To have someone to come home to

I'm still here...

@ Days just pass away, and I'm still here..
The sun dies and comes again to life, and I'm still here..
Fish is caught, fried, and eaten, and I'm still here..
People get sick and then recover, and I'm still here..

I'm still here.. will I forever be here?
Will I ever go there?

I'm still here...

@ I think two of the most importants sciences one should study are Medicine and Psychology. That's because they let you know more about YOU; your body and your mind. And what do you think is more important to know than knowing YOURSELF?!

@ This is Faith. She's one beautiful girl. Would you like to be in bed with her? This is not cheap advertisment :) but that's the name of her website: inbedwithfaith.com

@ Here's another Flash game.. it's silly I know :)

Instant Messengers for Symbian OS Ser 80

@ I've recently bought a Nokia 9300 which runs Symbian OS, Series 80. I occasionally need to connect to my MSN or Yahoo! messengers on the move. Thus, I've been looking for a decent Instant Messenger. Through my search in the Web, I've found 3 interesting titles:

IM+ [?]
AgileMessenger [?]
TurboMSN [?]

AgileMessenger is freeware though it's to be shareware soon. IM+ worths $40 which is apparently a lot. TurboMSN is shareware as well. AgileMessenger and IM+ support the most popular messaging servers as MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ, and Google Talk. While TurboMSN obviously supports MSN only.

Differences:
IM+ does not support contact groups, shows contact names in horizontal and vertical rows (which might be annoying to some people), a little slow at browsing through contacts.

AgileMessenger does support groups, shows contact names in a single vertical row, fast, shows dialog window beside the contacts window (pretty practical), no text zoom, no file transfer, no 'contact is typing a message' message.

Turbo MSN behaves the same way as AgileMessenger, but the bad point is that messages appear below the contact name, eating up a lot of screen space, and there is no zoom either to view more text.

My personal choice is AgileMessenger. Try it out to see for yourself.

@ How about a PSP in this summer? Wouldn't that be cool? Well... I'm looking for a good used one these days. Used PSP's are dime a dozen I suppose.

@ Can you remember this...

Asante sana! --- Thank you very much!
Squash banana! --- Squash banana.
We we nugu, --- You're a baboon,
Mi mi apana! --- And I'm not.

This is the Lion King's Rafiki's chant to Simba. This is in the eastern African language known as Swahili. That language was extensively used in the Lion King movies, together with the Zulu language in the soundtrack. Here are the meanings of the characters' names:

Simba --- Lion
Nala --- Gift
Sarabi --- Mirage
Rafiki --- Friend
Pumbaa --- Simpleton
Shenzi --- Uncouth
Banzai --- Skulk, Lurk
Sarafina --- Bright Star

I live in Randomness

@ I live in Randomness. Where darkness mixes up with light, noise with silence, sadness with joy, bad with good, failure with success, and them with me...
I live in Randomness, and Randomness contains me...

I live in Randomness, and I've tried to get out, I've tried to escape, but everytime I do succeed at that, I find myself at another 'branch' of the chain stores of 'Randomness'...
I live in Randomness, and Randomness contains me...

I live in Randomness, though Randomness has killed myself, then buried my effort...
And though I've been living in it for quite a long time, I still do carry in my heart the hope of breaking away...
One day...

I live in Randomness, and Randomness contains me...

@ We've been recently buying those crackers known as Japanese Crackers. They're really delicious. They're different masses of flour coated with shiny colorful coats; red, green, and white. The tiny red ones are spicy, while the white ones are covered by green weed pieces. Yes, I know the description is kinda weird, but they're really delicious.

Any opinions as to what their origin really is? Are they really Japanese? *any Jap guys out there who can tell us?*

Sexual Desire from the First Sight

@ It's amazing how a girl could change your life. A girl that you have seen for 3 or 4 days only, especially if you're one of those who do not believe in 'love from the first sight'. But sometimes that term is a bit modified.

Do you believe in 'sexual desire from the first sight'? I think that's quite normal. Like when you see a hot girl downtown, and your adrenalin starts bouncing around. But most likely, this happens for a minute or so, then you completely forget everything about that girl. What if the fascination continues for weeks, or even months after the first incidence? You keep getting erections and having wild fantasies about the girl whom you've never spoken with. You even wish you could marry her, and have it with you forever.

It does happen sometimes, and thus, I think the term 'sexual desire from the first sight' deserves the same attention the original term gets.

Nature is God

@ I've been thinking recently of Nature, of how it is so powerful. Sometimes I do believe Nature is more than just what we think it is, or what it looks like to us. It's not just a sky, and an earth. It's not just some seas with fish, lands with animals, and soil with micro-organisms. It's not just physics and chemistry. It's not just an evolutionary ladder where the strong survives while the weak collapses. It's much more.

To me, Nature is God. While I do 'believe' in God as One and Only, I still think nature as a whole is God himself. Since I - nor others - could scientifically prove or deny the existence of God, what's left for us is only mere belief. Though I don't even recognize myself as religious or devout, I get tremendously astonished when I study, for instance, the anatomy of the Human body, not to mention that of just an eye. I find myself whispering words of gratitude to Whom have created such unbelieveably detailed and organized structures.

Now if you think about it in a scientific and logical way, Nature has made all the things it has or had in it. For instance, let's talk about Evolution. This everlasting phenomenon is the tool by which all organisms, including us Humans, have emerged to what they are/were. The first form of life is Amoeba, which is a unicellular organism, have passed through thousands processes of natural selection till it reached the shape of Human. Evolution choose what's suitable for the organism in its environment and augments this property, while what's unsuitable or unneeded is eliminated. It's as simple as that. In the past, for example, humans had moving ears. They could easily move it as a mammal does. That was because they dwelt in wild areas where danger is present, so they had to move their ears to the direction of sound to hear it better. Now being more civilized, humans do not need this property, so evolution eliminated it.

In the future, the human being is predicted to have a much smaller body, and a bigger brain, for the need of muscular power is getting less everyday, because mostly everything in our life today is automated. Humans as well are going to be even more civilized, and more rational, leading to increase of the size of the brain. These sorts of processes occur spontaneously, and this is how evolution works.

So I think that Nature is the real controller of our life. Somehow, and as days pass, I've been getting more and more sure that Nature is God. What we read in religious books of how God is a single figure, is - in my opinion - a way God is symbolized for the human mind to accept and believe in.

Cactus Attack!

@ From Freakish Fatalities page, Cactus Courageous subpage,

In southern arizona they have the sorts of cacti that have great arms like you see on old westerns, called saguaros. they're quite protected by various laws and live to be hundreds of years old.

In 1982, roommates David Grundman and James Joseph Suchochi decided pack up the guns and go wandering in the desert two miles north of Arizona 74, just west of Lake Pleasant. One or both of them was struck with the brilliant notion of taking pot shots at saguaro they found growing there. Maybe it was the Devil in them. Maybe it had to do with the eerily manlike shapes these monstrous plants can grow into.

Grundman shot a small saguaro in the trunk so many times that it thudded to the ground. "The first one was easy!" he cried, according to Suchochi. He next chose a specimen which stood 26 feet high and was estimated to be a hundred years old. Before the ringing in his ears had stopped, a four-foot spiny arm, severed by the blast, fell on Grundman, crushing him.

Quite scary, huh? That is blood-less horror. It's the horror that lives in us. Plus, that very story reminds us that plants - though being constant and still - can still attack back.

Back to white!

@ I guess Beige wasn't my thing, so here is my blog all in white again! I think it's neater this way, isn't it? I've added as well the grey dripping liquid you see at the top.

MobiNiL GPRS service

@ Egypt's leading mobile services provider MobiNiL introduced GPRS service (termed MobiNiL Life) a couple of years back. I've recently had the chance to subscribe to the service and use it on my Nokia 9300. In this article, I'll tell my experience with subscribing to the service.

There are 2 plans:
Default plan : no monthly fees. LE 15 ($2.6) per 1 MB.
Saving plan : LE 25 ($4.3) per month. LE 10 ($1.7) per 1 MB. It's obvious you won't be saving here unless you utilize more than 5 MB a month.

Pretty expensive if you ask me.

Anyway, first off, I had to call 442 to subscribe (free) as the website instructed. I did, and I received an SMS informing me that the service would be activated within 24 hours. Guess what? after the mentioned 24 hrs, I still couldn't connect. I re-called 442, and they sent me again an SMS, but that time, telling me the service is already activated!

I send them an email explaining this misunderstanding or whatever to them. I received no reply in 24 hours. So, the day after, I went to MobiNiL customer service center to talk to any guy there. I talked with a guy who told me he can't manually activate the service for me, and that I needed to wait.

As I was going home I received a call which had no number, but instead 'Private Number' was shown. I replied and it was MobiNiL. The guy was very helpful and kind unlike the other one. He activated the service during the call, and told me the other guy was incorrect as to what he said, and that he could activate the service manually on the PC. He asked me if I knew his name, but of course I had not at all.

So all in all, subscribing was not like I had imagined in my mind. I had looked forward to getting a more flexible experience from MobiNiL.

Fort Minor

@ Have you heard about the new hip-hop band Fort Minor? I'm not really into hip-hop but that band is a bit different. To know why, you first should know who Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park is. He is the rap vocalist of the band, and is known for the energy and enthusiasm he has in his voice. He was most notable for this in the song, In the End. Anyway, Mike Shinoda, together with other friends of his, formed a hip-hop side-project known as Fort Minor. The album is called The Rising Tied. The songs are really good; nice music and strong lyrics. Check out: Petrified, Believe Me, Remember The Name in their official website.

A Few Design Changes (v2.3)

@ Now there is a new logo (this) and a new sidebar logo (that). Link is non-underlined, color is now pale violet instead of blue, and is 'Georgia', not 'Arial'. Hover is a red underline. Visited links are grey.

@ I don't know why, but these days I don't feel like blogging at all... may be cause of my coming exams?!

WIRELESS POST!!

@ testing wireless posting from my Nokia 9300

Enough Sleeping!

@ I hate going to sleep! Though when I sleep, I don't want to get up! I wish they invent something that gives us the energy we get during sleep so that we don't sleep anymore! We're in the 21st century guys. We gotta find a solution to this!

Nokia 9300 First Impressions

@ I received my Nokia 9300 in the morning and I've been playing with it since. So here are my first impressions:

The phone is really small and compact! I expected a much more cumbersome phone than this. It really fits well in your hand (I even have small ones). To make it simpler to your mind, the phone has the same dimensions of the very popular Nokia 3310 but only 2 cm longer.

The inner 65K display is gorgeous but the only gripe - I think - is that the contrast is very sensitive on tilting the display. At one angle it's perfect, but when tilting it 2 more degrees wider, it fades out. Not a big deal, though.

The system speed is very acceptable. Not lightning fast, but also not that sluggish. The only slow-downs I got were when opening the Control Panel (it has a lot of stuff), opening an SMS, and opening the Web browser. Then again I repeat it's still very reasonable. I'm really surprised as to why many guys online say it's annoyingly slow.

All the applications work very well (though I didn't go deep in Media apps for I use my palmOne TE2 for these stuff). The Documents app is very fast and versatile as are the messaging applications. Mutli-tasking works like a charm too.

Reception is very good, and sound and call quality (in speakerphone and loud speaker) is perfect.

The QWERTY keypad and the joystick though being criticised a lot in various websites were almost perfect to me. The tactile feedback of the buttons is more than enough, and the joystick (though I admit it's a bit sensitive) does its job efficiently. So I guess it's a matter of personal taste.

I haven't tried browsing the internet yet (for I'll get the GPRS account started tomorrow), so I'll be posting more about it very soon. I'll even try to post wirelessly to this blog!

Urban Murdering Madmen Legends

@ I love Horror. Whether it's movies or books (which I prefer). I've recently come across a simple well-organized webpage listing the most popular urban murdering madmen legends/tales in the Western cultures. It's good! Here are some legends:

- Rape victims are lured from malls with the promise of appearing in pizza commercials. [+]
- Male rescuer warns woman of dangerous man hiding in the back seat of her car. [+]
- Old lady begging a ride turns out to be a crazed killer in disguise. [+]
- Student opens door to dormitory room and discovers the body of her roommate. [+]
- Babysitter receives threatening phone calls from upstairs extension. [+]

If you saw the Scream movie series or the mockery series Scary Movie, and liked them, you'd probably like these. There are many more in that webpage. If you want to read the other horror sections, check out the main horror page.

@ My dad's coming to Egypt from Dubai on Friday! It's gonna be good. He's coming for some medical lecture/conference in one of the grand hotels in Cairo. He'll stay for like a week or a little bit longer.

The Residency War - AMGs vs FMGs

@ Taken off my other blog; Medicopedia.

Well, I've read that sentence in a website a couple of months ago (..don't remember the URL). So they say it's getting even harder for a foreign medical graduate (FMG) to get a residency in the United States. That may lead to sending the foreign doctors to remote places, like rural areas,..etc.

Racism? mm,.. I think it's like "Yes and No" at the same time.

Why "No" ?
Rationally, people of a certain country has given a lot to their country throughout their life. They've grown in it, and are more able to cope with most of the circumstances that occur. Whether it's social, cultural, or economic, native people are more aware and more familiar of what to think, and what do about it. That's unlike the case with a foreign person, who in most of the cases is not that oriented with the country he's going to live in. That was generally speaking..

Now let's come to the medical part. The USMLE exam requires a specific way of thinking; an intelligent, concise, and more importantly 'clinical'. American medical students study medicine that way in their medical schools, so they automatically graduate with minds that we can call: "American Medical Minds". On the contrary, the majority of the FMGs applying to the USMLE come from developing countries (statistics) whose medical schools lack of any sort of appropriate, or sufficient way of teaching. The lecturers are way too narrow-minded; there are only very few, or no modern equipments available for the student; there are 'too' many medical students that sometimes a single grade includes over 900-1000 students, and a single practical section may include over 80 students.

I think it's very fair to say that the native American MGs are worthy of residencies more than FMGs are. Even the statistics show that over 90% of the AMGs pass the USMLE exam, in comparison to only 50% for the FMGs.

Why "Yes" ?
I think it's very unfair that FMGs need 'more' marks in the USMLE to get residencies for certain specifications, like surgery. It would've been a lot more fair for the USMLE to be equally applied upon all the takers, regardless of their ethnicity. Normally, most of the FMGs do not pass the USMLE (like I said above. The percentage is 50). Now it became even harder, as for instance, scoring a 150 is equivalent to an AMG scoring a 100! Sometimes AMGs get better residencies though they score less than FMGs in a certain exam. This is totally unfair!

What do you all think?

Corruption in Universities of Egypt

@ I've been learning at one of the big public universities in Egypt for like 3 years now (medical school), and sadly, all what I've been seeing is corruption. Let's put these in points to be clear -- "10" is enough for now:

01. The number of students in a year (i.e course or grade) is not less than 800! Need I say more?! How would such a huge quantity leave any chance for serious or useful learning? All of these are to attend lectures in one or 2 lecture rooms! Imagine how communication would be between the lecturer and the students, esp. those at the rear.

02. Per grade, there are 12 practical sections (labs). i.e. The 800 students (for instance) will be divided upon 12 sections making around 66 students per section! Still a very big number, especially for a pure practical education like medical one.

03. In the 'practical' sections, everything is being taken except practical stuff! Yes. They give you academical stuff that anyone could get from a book, or from attending the lectures. So why would students attend them? They are obligated to do so. Why? cause your name is written down every section you attend, and if you had many absences at the end of the year, you'd fail!

04. More than half of the students go to those known as private tutors for a relatively pricy costs. Poor students cannot go to those, for sure. And guess what.. who are those private tutors? They are the very academic doctors at the school!!

05. The labs are very much lacking equipments and essentials. Sometimes you can't find a spare microscope for yourself. One of the rooms I used to attend at in my first year had no working ceiling lamps.

06. We have to buy books written by the education staff in school in order to not be put in their BlackList. Once you buy the books, you write down your signature (or name). This means you're saved. What if you don't need those book? What if they suck and you just don't want them? What if you are poor and can't afford their price?! There many alternatives that are much better than such books (which are copied from international sources, by the way).

07. The practical books are being shared by students for copying/pasting purposes if you know what I mean. You get a friend's book, and just copy what's in it in yours. This is how practical education goes here.

08. The Anatomy and Pathology museums simply suck. The specimens are like 50 years old. You just can't see anything. I remember one day I was there looking for the "Heart". After long searching, a friend of mine directed me to a brown glob. When I asked him what it is, he simply said "It's the heart!".

09. There is nothing as MCQ sort of exams in our school (and all universities). After more than 50 years of international usage of that type, they're still reluctant as to use it or not. Heck! They still use the 'write-what-you-know-in-not-less-than-3-pages' strategy.

10. In the library, you can't just walk around freely between books and check what you want to read easily. There are guys standing by the book shelves. You have to know the title of the book you want. You can't browse it before taking it. Once the guy get a book out of the shelf, it's the one you are to borrow. No compromises. Of course you have to sign a borrowing policy,...etc too....

@ I will get the slides of Pathology tomorrow from the department. I think I have a light microscope here at home. My dad used to work on it like 20 years ago... Well, I'll see if it still works.

Design Version 2.00 accomplished

@ I've just finalized the new design (v2.00). It's almost like the previous one, but the background is now beige, changed some alignments,...etc

Nokia 9300

@ I've been talking with someone about a Nokia 9300 deal. It's used, in good shape, and very cheap. A real chance. However, I'm a bit reluctant. I've always like the idea of the Nokia communicator sector, and I've even owned a 9210i before. But I ended up selling it for it was too big for my small body at the time. The Nokia 9300 is much smaller and lighter (@ 167 gm vs 250 gm), but I've heard a few ppl complaining of being bored and tired of carrying it around after some time. So... (!)

@ Mum and sister travelled to Alexandria.

@ I've been doing a lot of easy and good Flash work on KoolMoves, an easier alternative for Macromedia Flash. I've made the 2 animations below in it. These were the first 2 or 3 times I use the program. Google it if you wanna try it for yourself.

@ Wouldn't be awesome to begin your day with legs like these or those ?

Happy Birthday Samar!

@ Happy B'day to my sister, Samar! 15 years! :: View Card

@ I'm gonna work on some flash projects in the few coming days.