Time Will Tell

There was a famous saying that only the victor will be remembered as they were the ones writing the history. One day we would look back to 9th July to learn if it was a wise decision to overreact and lock down the capital city, or was it a necessary action. Certainly the rally has disrupted my plans for the weekends. However, to claim that it would be a loss to me would be selfish. The rally that day might shape the future of the country, and for that, I would rather sacrifice the cancelled meeting and wedding reception.

My wife's cousin, who also happened used to be the Dean of the UM Medical School until recently, was planning the akad and reception for her daughter on the very same day - 9th July. The akad would be in the morning, a private ceremony at his house, while the reception would be smack in the middle of town. That was postponed to Sunday, when hopefully, all the excitement of the rally would have died down. On the Sunday as well, there was a planned symposium at one of the hotel in town, during which I was scheduled to give a brief talk. That was put back to later in the month as well.

In its own way, the Bersih rally has affected my plan for the weekend, and I would be keeping a close look at the twittefeed to catch up on the eye-witness account of the event as they took place. Hopefully, I would be able to as plenty of us were expecting a media black-out. And that would include disruption of the Internet service and possibly the cellular network. If that was the case - the Internet being cut - then it would be safe to assume that something ugly might have happened. And nobody would want that. Here is hoping that no blood would be shed in what was hoped to be a peaceful rally at the start.

S2 First Impressions

The first 24 hours of using an Android device was a mixed bag. There were definitely pluses with Android but the "safer" option of the iOS does have its advantages. Suffice to say that I was not planning to root the device, and since booting it up for the first time, it has yet to crash. In terms of the specs on paper, it was leaps and bounds over the iPhone 4, but speed was not everything.

It was pretty clear that even though the S2 packed a higher resolution camera, the output or at least the ability to produce a better photos was better on the iPhone. This was helped the the range of well-developed apps that the iTunes App Store had to offer. There were comparable camera app such as Instagram or my favourite, Camera+. I was also not able to easily update my blog due to the lack of a SquareSpace app on the Android.

Battery life was also a concerned, as my iPhone can last a whole working say with all the push services switched on. By the time I left the office earlier today, the battery on the S2 was down to about 15%. Maybe it was still early days for the battery, at the beginning of its charge cycle.

In the coming weeks, I would be in a better position to give a more objective opinion on what the platform had to offer. In the meantime, it would be one hell of a journey of discovery ......

HarisPhotoBlog.com Migration

With the recent fanfare over the announcement of iCloud and iOS 5, the rumors finally came through. The era MobileMe as we knew it was coming to an end, and it was a long time coming. Being a subscriber of MobileMe since 2004 during it's .mac days - haven't I told you that I'm a Mac fanboy? - the webmail service and other utilities it offered - iDisc especially was pretty cumbersome. And worst of all was iWeb. It was a closed platform and it was only possible to update the site from a single computer! Even if you were to used another Mac and log into the system, you would not be able to enter iWeb. It was a closed - and doomed - platform.

My previous attempt at starting a blog using the iWeb platform were abandoned not once, twice, but three times. I just couldn't cope with the interface. I can't customise the blog, nor can I update it on the fly. That really defeated the purpose of it being a mobile platform. I finally got my act together to start this blog and I have been active since its inception in March 2009 - this was the first entry. I have since had close to 800 blog entries, and the main reason for its longevity if you could call it that was the brilliant web hosting service from SquareSpace. I couldn't speak highly enough of the platform. I can update the blog directly of any web browser, iPhone, iPad, or just through a plain old email.

The longest surviving site I maintained on an iWeb platform was harisphotoblog.com. It was mainly a flash portal from my SmugMug storage. It just needed maintaining every few weeks or so, but even then, I felt the pain every time an update was needed. The upload failure rate was also rather high, and options were limited. I was not able to inject too much code into the system at all.

From next June, iWeb would cease to exist. I therefore decided to bail out, and opened another SquareSpace site. The difference was spectacular. I was able to post the photos and slideshows at HD size. The site was more customisable and the analytics were more thorough. Have a look at the site. You might find it a hard squeeze if you were browsing in a laptop or a mobile device ........

Spring Clean

Well, it was way past due that my room at Menara Timur was given a quick cleaning. Last week, as Prof Ikram moved out from his room at the Faculty Office, he had his staff moved quite a bit of his staff back into the room which I have been sharing with him for the past five years. However, he had hardly been in, juggling from the Faculty and the UMMC Director's Office. And with Edmund, another room ate of mine not using the room much, I was practically king in the room, hence it being unkept.

I spent a good chunk of the morning, prior to my tutorial, cleaning it up. It was quite interesting seeing the amount of junk I had accumulated over the years. In the end, I managed to fill up five big black plastic bags. Hauling them out of the room took some doing. I wicked I had brought my shredder from home to reduce the amount of papers I needed to clear up, then take it to the recycling area. Some of the documents were rather sensitive though, like my research data and patient notes. To shred they must.

Now that it was done, it was time to pack some of them away ........

Congratulations All Around

My Boss for the last seven years had just been made a full Professor. She took me and the rest of the crew out for lunch earlier today. The initial plan was to go to delicious, but judging from how they messed up our orders the last time we went over for lunch, we decided to give it a miss. After much deliberation we decided to go for Madam Kwan in Telawi. Fearing the place would be packed, we booked the table beforehand.

All was done .... burp!
We reached there in good time. All my previous tutors were present, which was nice. We caught up with news as some of them had retired. It was quite a long affair and it was way past 3 pm when we reached the ward. Then, the work piled in .......