Days long forgotten

That's the water bottle I'm using now… yes, the water bottle they gave us during JC1 orientation… that's like 6 years ago… seems so far and so distant. My sis sent me a youtube video of the RI(JC) IHC opening video for last year yesterday… and i started watching the rest of the related videos… amazingly i found the ultra lame video they showed us during orientation… the one about the different houses being greek mythology gods/goddesses and being banished to Z'kardia… got tons of dislikes and flames on youtube though… LOL.

But its kind of nostalgic… watching the orientation dance of the other batches and all (couldn’t find any for my batch tho, sad). Seems like in the recent years they started making really nice MVs of the orientation dances. And than there's the sun dance that's passed from one batch of OGLs to the next… i really liked watching that dance during my orientation… the dance is cute, hilarious… and really simple to follow - i did it once during the orientation… when the whole OG stayed in sch till like midnight to dance and have fun. I told myself during the orientation - when we just started doing the batch dance - that i was gonna do it properly and enjoy myself… and i did have a good time. Don't regret it, cos that was like the last time I'm ever gonna do something like that again… mass dance and all… didn’t go for uni orientation… and don't think i'll ever do something like this next time… Yeah… the batch dance… its really hard! Rather lengthy and all different moves… different moves for the girls and the boys… and they don't constantly repeat moves that kind of thing… I was talking to someone from another JC that time (when i was in J1 and we just finished orientation, it during during CNY when we were visiting my parent's sec sch friends)… and she was like 'what? you all only have one dance? so lousy! and how come you all can't remember the dance? we have like 4 or 5 (i can't remember how many) dances and everyone can remember all the moves!' Than she showed me her orientation booklet and i understood why… One dance consist of just 10 (or so) short moves (things like box step = 1 move) and the 10 moves are repeated over and over again throughout the duration of the music/song. Of course everyone can remember them. Ours? Some ridiculously hard dance (really, a dance!) with all sorts of different moves for the entire duration of the 4min? song that's impossible for normal people like myself to remember the steps to… without having my OGL there to demonstrate that is. Its like i absolutely can't remember what's coming next kind of thing. But still, the dance was really fun… I really enjoyed myself during the orientation...

Perhaps you can say that it's really stupid of my sch… to have such a difficult dance that like no one can remember… and that its better to have just a very simple dance that everyone can groove to… perhaps…? Well its not that my batch dance was difficult or anything… its just that we can't remember the steps and need someone to show/remind us - something which my lovely OGL did most of the time. We CAN do the steps, but we CAN'T remember when to do what step :X does that even mean anything? haha… still… we had fun and that was what mattered most. Granted, there were many ppl who absolutely hated it, but its really how you want to look at things… doesn’t matter whether the dance is easy or hard or stupid… as long as you tell yourself 'I'm going to enjoy this', you will.

 

Anyway back to my water bottle… started using it either last year or last last year after all my previous water bottles ended up in failure… either they got moldy or they leaked etc etc… Really like the aluminum water bottles… especially this one that's in my favorite shade of blue… XD Especially when you fill it up with cold water from the water coolers… The whole bottle will frost up almost instantly and ah… the nice cool 'ice pack'! And after leaving the bottle in the cold lecture theater (or anywhere cold) for a while, the water instead is nice and cold too XD Love it! Only thing is that every time it falls… Its gets dents… and with the stupid lose side pocket of my bag, that happens quite a lot… :X So much so that i've just taken to securing the bottle with a carabiner to my bag strap… o.o

 

Okays… I should get back to work now!

How do you like your music?

How do you like to listen to your music? Do you frequently make and change playlists to listen to? Do you use some online music service that auto selects songs for you (something i don't use, so i don't know much about it…)? Do you let iTunes or your choice of music player pick songs at random for you, or do you play it in some sort of order (alphabetical? by date?)

I'm a person who likes to be in control of what i listen to… so even if i use shuffle, I'd skip those songs that I'm not that fond of listening to. I'd often make playlists of just a few songs and listen to just that few songs over and over again… or better still, have just one song on repeat over and over. Like if i just downloaded a new song that 'just hits the spot' I'd listen to it (and only it) day in day out… till either i finally get sick of the song (maybe a week or 2 later?), or till i download even more new songs (than I'd probably be repeating a few songs, instead of just one).

When i get hooked on a song… its like I'd listen to just that song the entire time when I'm traveling… or if I'm out shopping… that's something that my sis absolutely can't stand… which also explains why the stats in my iTunes look like this:

heh… i really love pikanchi… at 300+ plays its my top played song… next up with 230+ plays is attack it… Attack it is a much shorter song though, so its not surprising that i listened to it so many times already… for the time i take to listen to pikanchi once, i can hear attack it 1.5x already… Evidence of how crazy i can get over a single song --> Kaze. Played over a 100 times already… and the truth is that the 1st time i heard it properly was just before CNY. I added the Time and Dream a live album at the same time, so I was busy listening to other songs like Once Again, Carry On and My Answer (which i really like too!)… those songs are great too, but kaze really was IT… i played it throughout the time i was cleaning up the house… made my spring cleaning experience much better XD

I guess what i like about pikanchi is that it's a rather angsty song? i like angsty songs XD

Normally i arrange my songs by date added though… and i'll listen to the last few songs added to iTunes… Went on a iTunes adding spree last night/this morning though… took quite a while but i've finally finished adding all arashi album songs into my iTunes library! Gotta do things like fill up the artist names and album names properly ya know..? and finding the kanji lyrics too… A huge thank you to yarukizero on live journal! I took a lot of the lyrics from there…! The rest came from jpopasia. Next up would be to fill in the remaining arashi songs that appear in their singles, but didn’t make it to the album… like most/all? of what they call the 'side b' songs? Not too sure what it means but.. i guess it's like the old days of the cassette tape where there's side A and side B… and side B would be the 'not so important' songs kind of thing? Perhaps...

I wonder how many songs arashi has released thus far o.o

Downloaded some music box versions of arashi songs too… quite cute, really love the music box versions done by yukimusicbox on youtube… a bit shrill but its fast paced and light hearted… some of the other versions i heard were kinda slow and lower pitched and made the song sound rather heavy… which defeats the purpose of me listening to a music box version. Well i guess it can be calming and stuff, but i've always been a sucker for fast music so XD

hmm… now over a 3rd of my songs are arashi's… including all that random music box versions and stuff...

ok, that's all for now…!

Mountain Lion coming... and Messages Beta!

Warning: Rants and more rants coming up. I'm here to talk/rant about the features showed in Mountain Lion thus far, not do a proper introduction of the features!

So a few days ago Apple announced that it'll be coming up with a new OS X - Mountain Lion in summer. I pretty much read all the top news/review articles from google that day… and here's what i feel about the new OS...

Am I excited about the new OS? Yes… No… Maybe? Definitely not as excited as I was for Lion. Could partly be the 'newbie mac-user' effect wearing off or something… could be that it was JUST a while back when i upgraded my OS… and the excitement doesn’t build up that fast again… or it could simply be that the new features aren't enticing enough for me.

 

It was just last year that Lion was released… so in just one year's time a new OS will be out. I'm kinda dreading this actually. New OS means that IF you want to 'keep up', you'll have to spent money. Grant, mac's OS aren't as expensive as windows, but still, it aint the 'just a few dollars' typical of iOS app store prices kind of cheap… after all I'm still a student with no income, shamelessly using up my parent's $$$ for buying everything and anything :S. Like the previous time round… I paid to upgrade to Lion (with my own pocket money), and i paid to get the new version of iPhoto too… still, I enjoyed the photo stream enabled iPhoto a lot… so it was worth the buck. Ah yes, the newer iPhoto versions that lets you uploads photos to any folder in Facebook is EXTREMELY useful for me.

Hmm, how about Lion than… its hard pressed to say exactly how Lion is great… partly because I've forgotten what's new in Lion already. One thing i know though, is that I hate Launchpad. Or rather, it was practically useless since I use Alfred to launch all my applications (now I'm using Alfred to do even more things, but that's for another post). The new expose is good, at least it makes things less crowded and expose more usable, since I always open a TON of apps and windows at once (and I don't use spaces - maybe I should? But that's for me to think about and try some other time…). A lot of features like airdrop, and version history (seems to only work in iWork, but i DON'T have) in Lion are useful, but are things that I don't use...

That seems to be pretty true for what I've seen on Mountain Lion thus far. Things like twitter  integration are cool and make we WANT it, but its really JUST a WANT and not a NEED. I hardly use twitter unless I make a conscious effort to… and I hardly ever use the twitter integration features on my phone even… would I use twitter more simply cause its integrated into the OS…? I don't think so. As it is, twitting is convenient enough for me already. I can tweet from my firefox address bar, I can tweet from Alfred, I can use Option + T to call up YuroFuko, a twitter client that I use (and really like)… I even paid 6 bucks for a program to export photos from iPhoto to twitter - but I've barely used it :S. Opps… :X

Notifications center…. sounds cool, but do I need it? I don't quite think so… why? I don't use my computer like my phone… where games and apps will have notifications to send me… The most prominent app that notifications would be useful for would be the Mail to me… what else? I really can't think of any others… But the thing is - I don't use the build in mail app in mac. I prefer to check my mail from 1) my phone… and 2) the browser. So unless there's some app/link that forces me to open up mail (to send an email to the developer for example, I'd be too lazy to open up my browser and copy and paste the email address, that'll be redundant anyway), I won't use my mail app… and I don't think that habit will change even in the new OS.

Ah, calendars would be a good thing to have notifications with… but i don't use it that much… and calendars as it is now, and  on my iPhone is quite enough.

Also, I already have Growl installed (went to check out the new version, gosh, you gotta pay $2USD for the latest version! And the thing is, I don't quite get what's new… its not that I don't support the devs, but the older version of Growl is serving me just fine so I'll keep the 2bucks for myself…). Growl is really a fantastic app that works with just about anything and everything. If you're a mac user I'm sure you have it already right? If not you should go download it… It shows notifications for your apps, like when my firefox finishes the download, or when someone sends me a message on adium… or when iTunes starts playing a song… etc etc.

China friendly measures… hmm this one. Well, I'd be pleased to have easier chinese language inputs… but that's about it? I must say though, I HARDLY type in chinese though… and even if I do, its just a few words… Mail support for QQ, 163 and 126… doesn’t affect me since I don't use these services. And how about things like searching in baidu, or video uploads to tuduo and youku? I just open up my chrome window, and click the shortcut there to get to baidu, and than search for the videos I want to watch. I don't think that'll change any soon. And oh, I'd still set my default search engine to google rather than baidu… (and wait, i don't even use safari much in the 1st place!). Video uploads? I don't upload videos much… like so far I've uploaded 1 video to youtube? Yes. ONE. Does it affect me? Sadly no. I use tuduo and youku to watch videos, not upload to them...

Quite a lot of tweaks have been applied to Safari… but unfortunately, I prefer the using Firefox as my main browser… and Chrome as my secondary browser. Sorry Safari, but you're 3rd… I love Firefox for all the add ons that I cannot live without… and ah… the keyboard shortcuts. Safari using command + number to go to the site in the bookmarks was a HUGE deal breaker, sorry. I open up loads of tabs, and use the numbers command to switch between tabs quickly. I just installed a Safari extension to change the keyboard shortcuts, but i only lets me use control + numbers to switch between tabs… that's a little confusing ya know? Since its command + number for firefox and chrome, and I switch between the different browsers a TON more often than I switch between Mac OS and XP (where everything is Control + something instead of Command + something). There's probably some complicated and sophisticated way to change the Safari keyboard shortcuts, but I'm just gonna stick with Firefox.

I guess the changes would be good on my dad's computer though, where he's using Safari and Safari ONLY… that is if we upgrade to the new OS this summer… and if I don't install firefox or chrome on his mac… (but i hardly use his mac anyway so…)

Ah, they brought some iOS apps over to the mac, and they renamed some apps like the address book to contacts, following the iOS. That's what should have happened earlier IMO… or have the iOS follow the mac OS in the 1st place… but yeah, it happened to me once… I wanted to call up the address book on mac, but no matter how many times i type 'contacts' into alfred, if didn’t find anything. It took me a while to remember it's call address book in mac. My dad was similarly confused by the different naming between the iOS and OS too… Notes coming over in mac.. that'll make the notes app on my phone more useful. It'll also be nice to be able to access my notes on the computer… but I'm equally inclined to use pick up my phone and opening the app to see what's in it. Bringing reminders over would make that app more useful… but maybe too little too late? IDK. I was using reminders for a while, than I realized it was a little chunky and not very nice to use - like the layout looked pretty boring and stuff… so now I'm using Wunderlist - which is free and is available on the mac as well (yeah free cloud syncing). It just looks better than the boring reminders for one. Now I kinda prefer just my multicolored pen and my notebook though. I jot down things during the meeting, than mark with numbers what needs to be down… and doodle all over with the different colors… I do need to improve on my handwriting though. Calendar… yeah I'd appreciate it if they bring back the calendar switching panel again.

Hmm… that's pretty much it? Airplay mirroring - no Apple TV, so no use… iCloud integration… good but… documents in the cloud… does it work with microsoft office? If it doesn’t, than sadly it won't be of much use to me… Also, I'm already using things like SugarSync to sync my FYP folder… and since I don't have a desktop - I use my macbook at home, the only place I might need to sync my documents to would be my phone and honestly i don't open documents on my phone much… nowadays the only thing I do on my phone when I'm taking the bus or train is to listen to music. Pretty much nothing else...

GameCenter - I don't have much friends on GameCenter… and as for friends that I actually KNOW in person, I only have 1 such friend in my list… :S So yeah… GameCenter on the mac really isn't appealing to me… and I'm still waiting for the mac app store to have more, and better games.

Gatekeeper… well i guess it adds a bit more protection on top of how mac is already rather impervious to viruses… they continue their mac store push here though… something that i think is not very nice, considering the bunch of restrictions they are putting on apps in the mac app store. Still, i don't think this is a feature I'd be relying on much. back when my old vista computer was still alive, i didn’t have a single firewall or anti virus software on. And my computer was fine… Yeah the hardware got fried, but that's a totally different matter… my computer didn’t crash because of a thousand viruses or something… my accounts didn’t get hacked etc… now my computer, both mac and XP, doesn’t have any anti virus software either :X… so yeah… ><

So well… there isn't much about the new OS atm to really excite me, or convince me to buy it. Things like twitter integration is nice to have, but I don't foresee myself using it much. Notes for the OS is good, but there are free alternatives like the newly released Wunderkit (which I just stumbled upon when I checked out the Wunderlist website - the pro is free for 90 days, after which you won't be able to edit other people's workspace - something like how only pro users can edit let other's edit the notebooks shared to me in Evernote, but I don't quite need that feature). I wonder what else is installed for Mountain Lion… maybe I'll end up holding up for the next OS.

Hmm… Apple has released iMessaging for macs though! At last! It's available as a beta download for Lion users, and it completely replaces your iChat application. You can download it from their site… installation requires a system restart though. I don't use iChat so I never knew what it was like… but apparently the new Messages app allows (what used to be) iChatting, and iMessaging. It also supports AIM, Yahoo, Google talk… too bad I only use msn. Why? Because that's the trend in Singapore. We are somehow, pretty much MSN users only… so I don't use anything else either. No point for me to use things like QQ when I won't have anyone else to talk to yeah? (Even on MSN, I hardly talk to anyone already.) So Messages to me is a great way to spam the phones of my friends using iOS5 with iMessages. You type a lot faster on the computer than on the phone after all.

Some things about Messages though - it sends out with your apple email address. Meaning that the receiving party will see that XYZ@XYZ.com has sent them a message. If they don't have your email address saved in their contacts, they might not know who you are.

Messages can send out the iMessage to either the contact's email (the one associated with the apple ID), or the phone number. Beware when selecting the email address though… they might not receive it if the option to receive messages from their email is not turned on! I spent quite a lot of time figuring this out on my dad's phone… worst still is cause it took quite a while for the change to actually take place, so I practically gave up already before my dad finally started getting the iMessages I sent a while ago to his email, on his phone. Complicated much? Yeah it sure was complicated for us. Also, since you are sending out the message with your email rather than your phone, the conversation will be in a separate thread from if you send the sms out with your phone. Its like receiving 2 messages from 2 different phone numbers… only that in this case, one is an email and the other is a phone number. Yes, it'll make a separate thread even though you have both the email and phone number in the same entry in Contacts. So you end up with two threads to the same person. A bit weird/stupid if you'd ask me. It's the same if you send out an iMessage with an iPad. It'll create a separate thread for that since it's sent out with your email (same thread as sending out from Messages for the mac).

Ah… contrary to the picture on the Apple website… the beta version of Messages has the chat bubbles in a cute pink and purple instead. Unless there's a difference between iChat and iMessage? IDK.

Well I censored off some bits of the conversation… don't mind that yeah...

There's also a FaceTime button on the top right hand corner… so you can FaceTime with ease… yeah. Emoticons are quite limited though… I miss my emoji keyboard on the iOS. You CAN see emoji in Messages though. The emoticons work just like in MSN… like the zipped up mouth guy is actually :X when I look on my phone. I'd actually prefer it if they don't auto change the emoticons… since some of the emoticons look weird anyway. Still, Messages is really fun - but only when you have someone to spam of course. Ah… just thought of a few more friends using the iPhone that I can bug too… XD

Ok, that's all I have to say for now. Heh I guess I've ranted enough already anyway. Nite nite!

New blog template!

Picked another template cos i realised the previous white on black gets really tiring on the eyes...

maybe when i have time i'll pick something nicer... and something that i really like.

Haliotis rufescens!

Pulling out all the DNA sequences… i came across the common name for Haliotis rufescens… it says Red Abalone. Cool… so i went to find some images...

 

The shells can be really pretty when polished...

Its quite pretty eh??

Mendeley!

Heh, i've been posting quite some bit recently, many of them with more photos than words. Well, I'm certainly glad that i managed to keep with my 'at least one post a week' promise… though it doesn’t exactly help with my writing skills since i've not been doing much of a proper writing recently. One thing for sure, is that MarsEdit really helps a lot in encouraging me to post. I can see at a glance which blog i've been neglecting etc… being able to see when my previous posts was motivates me to post things. And i don't have to go through the trouble of opening up my different blogsites. And ah, the ease of posting photos…. its much easier to post just a short entry with some text and loads of pictures. In a way its cheating, since it defeats the purpose of me wanting to practice my writing and typing skills… but it's not always that i have the time and mood to type long entires… nor the material/topic to talk about… so i guess all's good.

FYP is getting pretty hectic. We are, indeed running rather behind time… however, since i've decided to take time off to blog, (spent quite some time on blog entires in my other blog already)… I might as well spend some time to talk about this wonderful program i've found…

So, some time back, i was thinking to myself that i HAVE to start organizing and filing my small but steadily increasing collection of research papers before things get way too messy. The big problem with research papers for me is that, organizing them is such an awful chore… worst still, i don't even know how to organize them. 1st: the naming problem. When you fetch the pdf from the database, they either call the pdf by 1) some weird jumble of letters and numbers 2) some generic thing like 'science' or 'fulltext' 3) sometimes if they are nice, they'll call it something relevant, like the author or something… Most of the time though, i have to rename the file, and it always leaves up struggling to find a way to name my files WHILE allowing me to know what the article is about. Some ppl go by the arthur names and year, but that really doesn’t help me understand what the article is about… since I'm not familiar with the researchers in the field and all… Paper title? Most of the time the titles are very lengthy…!

After wasting loads of time searching and trying various apps (i was even seriously contemplating using iTunes to organize my files!), I finally found Mendeley. Actually, quite a lot of reviews have mentioned it, but i was reluctant to take it up at the beginning because it can sync the documents online… which ironically is a feature i found very useful later on.

Mendeley is an app like no other… None of the other programs i saw or tried even comes close… There's endnote, there's many other pdf file managers, there's Papers - this expensive 80 dollar app that sounds really great in functionality… but ah, the price tag...

What can Mendeley do and just why do i like it so much? Let me try and explain one by one.

First of all, its FREE. Yes… FREE! Well the free account includes 1GB of online storage, 500mb for your personal use and 500mb for sharing (more on that later). Well its not a lot, but than research papers usually don't take up THAT much space per paper… and if you have too many papers, that means u just can't sync them all online, you can still use it normally on your desktop, no problem. You can also pay for more storage space of course.

2) It runs on mac. And windows. And iPhone/iPad. Cool! That means that you can sync your collection of papers over your various computers, and i can even read the papers on my phone if i want to. Doesn’t let you do much else on the mobile apps but… i don't really need to do much else.

3) It manages the pdfs really really well. There's a lot of factors that make me feel that way… like:

Watch Folder - You can select folders that you want Mendeley to watch. That means that any pdfs you dump into that folder will be automatically added into Mendeley. Convenient much? Now i can simply save the pdf in my folder labelled 'papers' (oh how informative) and be done with it.

It scans the pdf for data - Mendeley doesn’t just rely on the pdf's metadata, it also SCANS the pdf file and will try to pick up details such as the DOI, title etc etc… It will also automatically check out their own database as well as google scholar to try and find any missing details… if in doubt, the program will ask you to check the data - you may have to put in the title manually (well, just copy and paste from the pdf) and ask it to do a web search… well if all else fails… there's always the manual input option.

It is a pdf reader on its own - Now that all your pdfs are nicely organized, you know which file is which… its time to do the actually reading. Wonderful news: Mendeley has a built in pdf reader, and lets you do things like annotations, highlighting, writing notes etc… and with the tabbed browsing, i find it much neater than preview. I also don't have to switch between finder and preview to call up another pdf file - i get it all done in one app.

Folders, smart folders - The usual folders allows you to group your papers. There's also a favorite button for marking really good/useful papers.

4) It can also manage citations and bibliographies. It can plug in to msoft word, open office etc… even has a nifty little shortcut key for adding citations etc in MS word. Neat.

 

I've tried endnote too, even attended a short course on it… but it was precisely during the course that made me aware of Mendeley's advantage over Endnote. (The librarian did mention mendeley at the start too, makes me wonder why they don't offer courses on how to use mendeley instead… but than again, mendeley is really easy to use… wait, endnote is really easy to use too, i didn’t quite need that course actually :S)

While endnote works really great as a citation tool, it fails so much in terms of pdf handling capabilities when compared to mendeley.

Endnote cannot scan the pdf. So if the metadata of the pdf fails, the whole pdf entry fails and you have to manually edit it. Sure, endnote is able to search many online databases, but it cannot merge entries. So i'll still have to manually key in the data for the pdf file, or i have to manually attach my pdf file to the online entry. Either way, its troublesome.

Mendeley is working to have more sites include a button to import the citation directly to the program, and they also have a little bookmark that lets you do that… but for me, I'd want to read the paper rather than site directly… i want a copy of the paper… so i pretty much add my mendeley entries only using pdfs. Same goes to endnote… only that mass importing of all my pdfs doesn’t work very well since quite a number of the files don't have proper metadata. It doesn’t have a watch feature either so i'd have to manually add in the pdf files… and if the pdf doesn’t have metadata, I'd still have to copy the title over and do a web search. So it quickly became such that i had to search the web database every time i want to cite the new article i just read (while simply writing down and organizing my background information in MS word)… which is quite a chore.

Endnote doesn’t have a built in pdf browser. AND because of its limitations in handling pdf file based citation entry additions, I'd rather use the web search to get my citations quicker. That means that it's not managing my pdf files at all (even having to file the right pdf file to attach to the right citation entry would in itself, be a challenge!).

So while endnote is a good citation tool… I'm simply going to stick with mendeley for my citation needs. It seems to do the job just as well anyway, and coupled with the easy library management, i'd say that it does it even better.

Things like scanning of pdfs is something that all other free/cheap pdf managers does not have. Oh yes, the scanning of the pdfs means that you can search within pdfs. Like you recall something that you read somewhere and want to call out the pdf, but that something you remember isn't in the title or even the abstract… mendeley's search function will be able to find it for you.

 

Overall, the program looks really neat, and has all the features i need. Oh there's even addition features that i don't need at the moment, like groups and file sharing. Its like a social network on its own, allowing you to create groups and share papers with other researchers. It'll be useful if say your research group are all using mendeley for example. But right now its just me by my lonesome self so yeah...

If you're looking for something to organize your papers, I'd say Mendeley is your one and only choice.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day!

 

Today wasn’t such a good day at all for me… started off with a sore throat, which became a flu + fever...

feeling much better now though, thankfully. Almost done with my protein 1 blastn so… that's good news i guess.

 

Saw this being sold in the pushcart stall in ssh yesterday… and just had to buy it… heart-shaped one for my sis, apple for me.

opps… sorry for the photo spam… but $2.50 each for a pretty, color changing light device, with batteries included… i just couldn't resist… well i was feeling really frustrated with the blast work so yeah, retail therapy? lol.

Dreams and Reality - Photos Part 2!

Yup, so more photos coming up!

Kitaro...

Bleh… after listening to kitaro's matsuri… that tune is now stuck in my head. it’s a really nice tune… one that i've heard since young… really like it a lot… but the stupid disk is missing from its CD :S been listening to it the whole afternoon already… very nice… but the base isn't that strong/obvious from the video… that and the standard iPhone issue earphones aren't probably the best thing to use for listening to such tunes...

A CD case with no disk yay. My dad should have took the disk to listen in the car… only that he took everything out from his car sometime back before sending it for repair… and now he's got no idea where all the stuff are… if this disk isn't with the rest of the CDs front eh car though… than i really have no idea where it can be :S i already dug out and checked all the disks the the TV cabinet yesterday… don't know of any other CD dump in the house already… :S

 

making do with this for now till i find the disk… sighs...

 

National Art Museum of SIngapore… Photo special part 1!

Went to visit the dreams and reality exhibit at the  museum last… Sunday… and here's some picture spam...

I really like this painting. Looks very realistic and 3D when u actually see the painting. On photo, esp a photo taken with my noob iPhone… BLEH.

eeps… this one is really blur...

Ok, that's part 1 of the photos… :P no idea how many parts there will be, but it took A LOT of photos...

Scary!

Doing swiss model now…

i have to submit the sequence to the site and after that they will send me an email when its done… since i got like 50++ sequences for my protein 1… now its like…. (i did quite a few of them already too, mind you)

SSCARYYYY!!!! Just of sheer volume of emails is overwhelming! I gotta go to each of the report and dl the pdf and pdb files… and copy n paste the info out...

 

And than i have protein 2 with 70+++ sequences to do clustal and swiss model with :S

 

Its not a hard job, but its tedious… exceedingly tedious, and very time consuming… just like how adding stuff to HS db was also a very tedious job. Its just that i have tons of other things to do like lit reviews, writing etc etc...

 

one step at a time… one email at a time...

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature

Working on my FYP and blasting thru that various taxa… i came across a hit from the organism Botryotinia fuckeliana. Sounds like a swear word much? Well, there are a lot more weird names in bio… as this website shows...

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature

EndNote

Whee. Just finished attending the endnote course. Most of the stuff I figured out on my own already, but I did learn some new stuff - like I have to change the endnote format to plain text when I'm done with my report - a stage which I'm still a bit far away from...
The instructor was very nice and energetic... And the classrooms were omg pretty! Nice seats, nice aircon... High tech screens... And they even provided sweets and some refreshments for us to have during break. And on top of learning abt how to export citations from various websites to endnote, I also managed to find a couple of papers... Some looks really promising too. I.e. having the info I want and need.

Glad I attended the course - tho it did get a bit draggy at times. Like there was this Angmo who ask the weirdest of all qns, like what is the use of creating groups in endnote... -.-" to manage ur references la baka! If u do, or if u start doing research u'll know just how messy all those refs can get...

K, I'll probably dabao subway to eat in the office once more.

Backing up my files… to a NTFS drive

Ok… so my mac is running out of space and i found some folders to backup (and remove from my comp). I happily took out the (new) seagate external hard disk and plugged it in my  comp… and… lo and behold… i can't write to that drive cos its in NTFS format. Can read the folder, but not write… Bravo… google time!

 

The best solution i saw was to install Macfuse - which i already have - and NTFS-3G.

Problem 1) NTFS-3G came up with a commercial, more reliable, but paid program called Tuxera. I didn’t know the diff between the two at 1st, and downloaded the paid one (actually, i thought the changed the program from free to paid). Installed it halfway, and abandoned installation. Than it keep giving me error messages saying that the license code was wrong… restarted and to no avail… finally got it after i copied and pasted a bunch of code to terminal to remove that program completely.

Problem 2) Some error message about macfuse being not found kept popping out… by that time i was getting really really pissed… with the error i can't even read the external hard disk anymore. no new macfuse updates could be found, reinstalling macfuse didn’t work… only later than i read somewhere that they came up with a new version of macfuse called… OSX fuse. Bravo… no wonder i couldn’t find it! No links from the old site to the OSX fuse page either. -.-'''

After installing that, it finally worked… i can now read AND write to the NTFS drive...

Links:

NTFS-3G - Main blog site - Note to self: look for NTFS-3G, not Tuxera

OSX Fuse

 

 

EDIT: ok, i think the devs of macfuse and osxfuse are two diff teams? oh wells, i'm just glad that there are ppl working on these open source freeware for everyone to enjoy :)

 

Whee… 8.7GB of space freed up… now let's backup more stuff...

1.5 years

How much does 1.5 years of difference make? If you're talking about IT… it makes a HELL lot of difference.

I've got my mac and my dad's mac side by side again… and happily enjoying the benefits of Teleport… this time round i'm downloading a whole bunch of 3D modeling software by DAZ3D… who's giving away a wonderful bundle of 3 software for FREE.

I was looking at the comp stats… apart form the extra 4 GB of ram the retailer threw in during the IT show… the mac's also got double my 250GB hard disk space… and it's also running on Intel Core i5… whereas mine's Core 2 Duo… sighs… such a whole lot of difference… Considering how i always run a million programs and use up all my ram… the faster processor speed and extra 4 gb ram would indeed be very useful. Ah and the DOUBLE hard disk space… *drools*… i cleared out a bunch of files and song and now have 20+ GB of free space… well i am still in the midst of downloading those 3D software, and i did install the whole adobe photoshop + others bundle so that took up quite a bunch of space… but my hard disk space is in a rather critical state :S

Managed to identify a folder to back up later… so after that's backed up and deleted i'll get an extra 7-8GB of space… bleh… really don't know where all the space has gone to! Ok… 40gb did go to XP after all :S

 

A mere 1.5 years and so much hardware improvements even though price remains exactly the same… heck, even the OS improved from snow leopard to lion… humph… well i did enjoy my lappy throughly though, so i don't regret buying my lappy than… yes, made use of my comp so much to the point of abuse hehe...

 

Ah… just the other day i was tinkering around with the Better Touch Tool app and here's what i ended up with.

The bad thing is that some times i end up accidentally activating something… if that gets too irritating/happens too often, i'll probably add a modifier key to go with the gestures.. we'll see how it goes.

 

And yes… google is letting us customize our home screen background! I tinkered around a bit with some photos on my comp (and my brand new photoshop) and came up with this… i'm not too pleased with the results though… the picture quality isn't very good and all… but i was in school and i was supposed to be working on my fyp so i didn’t have time to do any better… hmm… maybe i shd make one with banned story instead?

I think this is pretty much just for show though… cos the picture takes quite a while to load and… unless i just restarted my browser, whenever i go to google its cos i have something i want to search for in mind and so i'll type in something right away. And now with the real time result thingy they have, the moment i key in something it goes over to the regular results page, so i don't even get to see the horrible picture i made as my background. Bravo… All i end up with, is an ugly looking whited out google logo :S

 

In yet more random news… i just figured out that somewhere along the many updates, iPhoto now has the ability to see all your photo albums… and you can upload your photos to any of the existing albums, even if they weren't so called… iPhoto linked albums. Of cos u can create new folders from iPhotos too. This is certainly a big improvement over last time… now it makes photo uploading and managing a breeze indeed. Its been a super duper long time since i uploaded any photos to my Facebook account so yeah… didn’t realize this…

 

okay, that's all for now!