Monday, December 31, 2007

Thanks For Visiting! Site Review 2007.

Who are you? The Don demands to know...


A Big thank you to all of my readers. This site has progressed from having only a handful of hits a day to an average of more than 20 hits a day. More importantly, a few return readers click in each day. Statcounter was really a blessing, it allowed me to see what people were clicking on and where they came from (half of the 4200+ hits are from google images!). It's even smart enough to avoid counting my own visits!


The internet has made the world a smaller place.



A typical week...



9.8% of visitors are returning visitors!

Monday, December 24, 2007

Holiday Life @ Home

Prawn Entrée



I've been home for about a month now. '=.= Yet this is only my second blog entry since coming back. Yeah, I've been busy.

Clocked about 100 hours on the CS:UWCIII server at SgXplorer. Finally reached level 32. Counter-strike:Ultimate Warcraft III is a modified version of counterstrike that is more fast paced than the original counterstrike. Runspeed is three times faster. Skills such as phoenix and vengeance allow players to respawn - turning pussies into heroes who dare to 'storm the front'. The more you play the more XP you get. This in time allows you to increase your base attributes such as health, dexterity and agility. Skillpoints allow you train skills such as entangling roots, teleport (!), vampiric aura and hex. Since skillpoints and XP accumulate, it's really addictive. Spells such as heal and repair (armour) lets you fix your teamates hp/armour for XP. There is even a shop (activated by saying "shopmenu") that allows players to buy stuff like the helm of excellence that prevents headshots. It is a totally awesome game that allows for very dynamic, fast paced action. Respawning means you dont have to wait for the next round to start if you die early.

A number of tactical options also open up. My personal favourite and fun strategy involves maxing out my Invisibility skill, buying an Amulet of Cat (no footsteps), and buying an Orb of Frost (freezes opponents for 1sec when you shoot them). Invisibility is highest when switched to knife so I then hide and wait for someone to pass. I sneak up behind them and pistol kill them with a silenced USP. Yeah it pisses enemies off, but it's just so damn fun. Shadow strike (poison) or carrion beetles (disease) finishes the job if i dont get to kill them. If they notice me, I'll gate (a spell that teleports me back to base, binded convieninently to mouse3 for quick response).

I am, "Outpinged"

I also managed to find myself a pair of Grado SR80s. They are hands down the best headphones i've ever used. They bring new life to my entire music collection. Instruments sound like they are being played live in front of me. It's just awesome.

Last but not least, I've been enjoying the great food mum makes. From nasi kerabu to laksa johor. Malaysian food is different from food in australia, even chinese and malay food. This is because grounded fresh chilli paste is not available there. And of course chinese food in places outside malaysia is missing one very key ingredient - belacan!


Nasi Kerabu


I was wondering why my mum wanted me to buy anchovies from Australia. She wanted to make Budu! Budu is typically made from preserved fish, but mum told me that i could make it myself if i cant find it using anchovies. It doesnt taste half bad. Below is a picture of what is quite possibly the most expensive "budu" ever. A very very small 50ml jar of anchovies cost about RM10. A huge 800g bottle of "budu" costs only a few ringgit.

"Budu"

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Clinical Reflections


Clinical Reflections
I have two more months of holidays to go. This time will be well spent, revising stuff I learnt over last year. I guess I have reached a point in my education where dry memorization doesnt work anymore. The bottom line is that I have to put more thought/thinking/mental effort/focus into my work. I have started a new blog to fulfill this purpose. I will be updating it with things that cross my mind that I feel are related to my course. Medicine is about familiarization and application of knowledge. The inaugural post is about angioplasty - a topic that i happened to hear about, and subsequently look up, when a relative had heart palpitations.


All About Banners
It took me awhile to come up with a suitable banner for the new site. It had to be something that reflected the subject matter. Initially i used a red crystal (alternative to the red cross/crescent/star/lion) and WHO caduceus (snake thingy).




I did a bit of reading about the two symbols. Apparently the red crystal is protected by the Geneva convention, and using it is a violation of international law. The same goes for the WHO watermark I used. I decided to remove the WHO watermark and use just the crystal symbol instead. In much the same way as some videogames (eg. Call of Duty) replaced the internationally protected red cross symbol with an army green cross, I changed the colour of the red crystal to army green.



The problem now was that the banner looked ugly. Imagine the banner with the above symbol and no WHO caduceus. It didnt even feel like it had anything to do with medicine. I then set off to look up wikipedia for some opensource images that made a viewer think "medicine" on first glance. The free to use images werent of the best quality, but would suffice for my banner with some editing. I decided to use the image of a syringe and needle. Sthethescopes are too cliche.




After playing around with it awhile, I came up with another banner.




It still somehow didnt have the feel I wanted the new blog to have. Working on GIMP (opensource, free photoshop) I came up with a suitable banner a few hours later.



Click the banner above to drop by my new site!