Who needs ER or Grey’s Anatomy when real Doctors are saving real people. This Star article tells of a trauma surgeon’s, Dr. Chughtai, race against time to save a stabbed teen’s life. The knife had penetrated through the teen’s chest and had nicked two holes in the endocardium of the heart. What’s really cool is the technique he used to open him up. In the past, the standard practice would’ve been to do an Emergency Thoracotomy , which consists of an incision down the midline of the body at the sternum, and subsequently using a sternal saw (literally) to cut through the breatbone (sternum).
Instead, Dr. Chughtai opted to do a clamshell thoracotomy, which consists of cutting across the chest left-to-right-wise, and “propping” open the rib cage. (For full glory of this procedure: http://emj.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/22/1/22)
It’s amazing how far we have come in resusitation techniques and procedures.
First off, who would’ve thought that driving a bus was so much stress. According to the Star article, nearly 200 TTC bus, streetcar and subway operators suffer from post-traumatic stress. It goes through the stories of couple drivers who have been shot at, spat at, and witnessed multiple suicides and been beaten at. Some are even afraid to ask patrons to pay full fare in fear of being beaten. While some argue that their hourly rate of $20-30/hr to be excessive, many don’t realize the working condition that these men and women endure. Interesting, “”They’re easy targets. They wear a uniform. They represent a form of authority but without too much power,” said Brunet, who found a “higher than expected” rate of the disorder among Montreal bus drivers in a study conducted 12 years ago.Norman Shields, a psychologist who treats combat veterans, says bus drivers might be more likely to suffer from the disorder than soldiers because of the driver’s relative inability to act – to use handcuffs, a weapon, anything to react to the adrenaline rush that comes with an assault.”
So folks, let’s cherish our drivers with a smile next time you board the bus (even if the bus driver saw you running towards them and proceed to drive away from you.)
Every so often, something catches my eye, and I get the impulse to blog about it… This time is no different. That’s right, like many of you out there, I’m waiting for a Wii… but I’ve already have my eyes on add-ons already – Wii Fit. This particular add-on brings you a pressure sensitive pad/controller. Kudos to Nintendo for your design. Could you imagine how many possibilities it opens up when you combine it with the Wiimote, and the nunchuk?
Some ingenius rendition of the 24 paired with old-school technology and some really bad hair. To quote engadget, “How did Jack Bauer ever get by without his magical Treo? We figure it must’ve involved a whole lot more eyeball threatening than he usually manages to cram into a season of 24. Also, according to CollegeHumor’s “unaired 1994 pilot” episode, it involved a pager and some really bad early 90’s hair.
So, it’s true; MacBook Air is born; it’s definitely sexy, no to mention the .16″ thin, 13.3″ LED-lit LCD display form factor. Head over to: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/, and click on Design to see it.
MacWorld 08, being one of most exciting times for all techophiles, promises to be an exciting times this year. Past years we’ve seen the introduction of the iPhone, the iPod, and other products that have both revolutionized the industry and changed the ways in which we live our lives.
This year is just as exciting. There are rumours of the MacBook Nano, a sub-notebook of the Mac family – something that has been tried / produced in a while. Multi-touch interface is also highly hyped this year.
Engadget is doing a live coverage at : http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/live-from-macworld-2008-steve-jobs-keynote/ … The SteveNote started at 12PM EST. So far we’ve seen the Time Capsule, a network storage device that I suspect will store “snapshots” of your computer, and will allow you to restore it to a certain point in time.
Every so often, I get the urge to write about something as soon as I’m reminded of it. This time, it’s the beautiful photography done by Hamish Darwish. His work has been featured and shipped to millions of people as part of Windows Vista’s desktop wallpapers. On http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070126/finding-vista-wallpapers/, is an interesting article on how Microsoft elicited photographs for shipment with Vista. Apparently, they went through over 20,000 photos, over 50 GB of files for the first round.
Nevertheless, two of his work, out of the thirty that he had submitted made it. As for the rest, he’s releasing them in a .zip file on his own web site. (See bottom of: http://www.hamaddarwish.com/vista.html) .
5. Slimming down Windows. Windows, like bacon, naturally comes with a lot of features and other background-running programs, called services, that gobble up resources. Now, these little programs make sense on desktops that may encounter a variety of foreign hardware (i.e. an obscure specialty printer, and archaic storage devices). However, if you’re using EEE PC like it’s designed to be used, i.e. a ultra-mobile platform, chances are you wouldn’t need all those programs.
The best way to trim the fat is at the beginning when you’re installing windows. nLite is a program just for that. With any windows installation CD, you can create your own customized set of features to be installed. The program then compiles your own customized Windows XP Installation CD. Pretty powerful program.
4. Use the “Customize” mode whenever installing programs. Like Windows, program installations often carry unneeded features. Stuff like help files, non-native language packs. For example, a full installation of Office 2007 Enterprise has programs like Access, Infopath, Groove – chances are you’ve never heard of them, and therefore won’t need them. For another instance, we really don’t need to have Google Toolbar occupying more screen estate whenever we install acrobat.
3. Use Open Source equivalents. Open source programs are almost always free, and are comparable in features and perforamcne to its commercialized counterpart. The term open source refers to software that are usually collaboratively developed by having its source code freely available. (source codes are like the blueprint to a building. By having it freely available means that anyone who knows how to modify the blueprint can do so.)
There are alternates to PDF programs. There are alternates to image editing programs, GIMP. Installing Acrobat Reader (~20 MB) might be overkill and possibly straining on the system when a 3MB alternate gets the job done.
2) Offload your files. With the limited hard drive space of the EEE PC, it makes sense to carry your documents somewhere else. Leave the hard drive for the operation of the system. Consider carrying your documents on a fast USB memory stick. Better yet, carry them on a SD card as the Eee PC has a SD slot. Be sure to purchase a SD HC card, which functions much faster and has a higher capacity than regular SD cards. SD HC cards are rated by “Class”: Class “6″, which is what you should get, is faster than Class 4, which is faster than Class 2.
1) Optimize XP. The history of the Windows legacy is such that is OLD, and such that it is akin to a pair of jeans that’s been patched and patched and patched over the years. Unlike the Mac operating system, the need to support centry-old (in computers time) hardware means that it needs to keep everything with each revision.
As such, there are many things you can do to optimize it. http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx is a great page. Disk Clean-Up, and reducing the internet cache comes to mind as the simplest ones.
I just want to share with everyone that I thoroughly enjoyed Stardust. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend it to everyone.
Those who knows me know about my geeky side. In my lil box in Res at Queen’s, I run three computers, which keeps my room nice and warm. Before you strike me down with your eco-friendly arguments, there is a purpose to the madness (or hotness). I’m finding the cure to cancer.
My computer is part of an international network of computers that analyses and predicts protein shapes. The project amasses the power of computers around the world when it isn’t doing anything that is calculation-intensive, i.e. 99% of the time that a computer is turned on. The CPU is only active when say, you open a file, starts a program; otherwise, it sits there idle not doing anything useful.
The particular project that I belong to is called BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It’s free. You download a small program, which then acts as an intermediary, sort of a controller, of all the different projects that you can sign up for. There is one that predicts global warming, one that cure cancers, one that solves mathematical problems, among others.
As of Dec 30, 07, I now rank at 18,868 of all users, and have contributed 98.445% more processing than others.
Your computer is probably not realizing its full potential. Why don’t you give it a try?
So today, I saw Sweeney Todd on the big screen, after much anticipation. As a musical lover, Sweeney Todd ranks as one of the best music in my humble opinion. A beautiful score, with heart-pouring difficult-to-sing vocal lines, combined with an ageless script/story, it makes the perfect combination for winning the Tony.
The story of Sweeney Todd, as summarized on Wikipedia:
Sweeney Todd, aka Benjamin Barker, is a fictional villain/antihero appearing in various English language works starting in the mid-19th century as a barber and an early example of a fictional serial killer. His weapon of choice is a straight razor, with which he cuts his victims’ throats. In some versions of the story Mrs. Lovett, who is variously his lover, friend, and/or partner in crime—and who is variously Marjorie, Sarah, Nellie, Shirley or Claudetta—bakes the corpses of his victims into meat pies, and sells them. He is also assisted by an unwitting servant lad named Tobias Ragg, who later aids in unmasking his crimes. In most versions of the story, Sweeney either helps or hinders (sometimes both) the love affair of a young woman, Johanna, and a sailor named Mark Ingesterie or, later, Anthony Hope.
I’m happy to report that Tim Burton’s adaptation was tremendously successful, and rather brilliant in his approach. As with any musicals-turned-into-movies, it remains a challenging task for the production crew, and particularly the director, to transfer the stage medium into film – one that is more fluid and dynamically multi-dimensional. Moving picture, particularly, allows for, say, the often sought-after extravagant scenes to be realized or otherwise physically impossible scenes to be made realistic. To that end, Burton’s take on the “By the Sea”, sung by Mrs. Lovett, was brilliantly done. The number speaks of Mrs. Lovette’s wish to escape the “great big pit” (London) with Mr. Todd to exotic places free from the evils of society. We see all the places that Mrs. Lovett wants to take Mr. Todd to; the scene changes in synchrony with the song. Such feat would otherwise be impossible to portray on stage.
In short, it gets my two thumbs’ up, and I would recommend it to everyone.
However, it is not without its flaws. As someone who has seen the musical 5+ times, and knows the music score by heart, I may at times be more critical than one who is only seeing this for the first time. Nonetheless, an interesting comparison between the big screen adapation and the musical production still stands.
Tomorrow: Part 2 of Sweeney Todd vs Sweeney Todd – A Comparison of the Screen Adaptation to the Stage Production
In light of the festivities, here are a couple finds from the web!
1) Making your own pop-up christmas-tree card. It takes surprisingly little skills and creative prowness.
2) Watch Charlie Brown Christmas - sung by the cast of Scrubs. Common, who doesn’t enjoy the good ol’ pixelated goodness combined with charlie brown and Scrubs!
3) On a more serious note, ever wonder what the real origin of Christmas is? You can even stream the story, in an audiobook-like fashion, from the web site.
Having finally switched my personal chiyan.ca hosting over to my company’s, I’ve decided to give blogging another go. Hopefully, this time it is to stay.
Seeing as it is Christmas in a couple of days, time will finally be on my side to do a couple projects that I haven’t had the time to do so.
Finish up First EducAid’s taxes and finances for 2007. It has only been in operation for 4 months (since August), and it’s fully time to wrap up the “fiscal year”.
Read Dr. Rachlis’ book, Prescription for Excellence.
Finish Harry Potter
Investigate graduate school options
Tinker with tech toys
Sleep, eat, do as little work as I can, eat, sleep (and repeat).
(For full glory of this procedure: http://emj.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/22/1/22)
It takes surprisingly little skills and creative prowness.