Increased Output

Recently, I bumped into an ex-colleague who was now plying his trade in a Private Medical Center across town. He came over for his weekly session at UMMC - and his wife still works there. Upon greeting, he remarked upon the number of blog envies I had up lately and how I managed to find the time to do it. He also mentioned the numb of links I had up on my Facebook updates.

I must say that since I have the iPad, things had been really straight forward. Let's start with the blogposts. I take all the photos on the blog on my iPhone 4. Despite one of my cousins dissing it - as now he sports a Nokia with a 12 MP camera - I still think that the iPhone 4 camera remains the most versatile. Great quality of captures with a great selection of apps utilising its capability. Those snaps were usually taken using the Camera+ App, which does amazing point-to-focus and point-to-meter implementations. Once captured, manipulation and editing of the snaps were done in app, as well ass uploading to Flickr and other social network. The photos were also uploaded straight into my blog if necessary as part of an entry, without needing to be transferred to a computer.

Next, the actual blogpost. Previously, I tended to do multiple entries at a time and then upload them in turns. The entries were usually done on a program called Scrivener which is then saved in the cloud using DropBox, to allow me to have access to the entries from any of my Macs. I would then cut and paste them onto the blog as an entry. This has now changed with iPad as I tended to type the entries straight onto the SquareSpace iPad app and upload them as draft directly. I can also put up the photos as necessary, although I order uploaded the edited iPhone snaps onto the Mac, edit them and uploaded them integrated into entries. This way, the alignments and the quality of the photos would be better.

If necessary, or if I was on the road, I could just type the blog post straight onto my iPhone SquareSpace app. It integrates well, and has so far been reliable. I can also keep track on the number of hits, as well as do some corrections on the fly if needed. If you notice, my blog used Disqus for comments. As soon as a comment was generated on my post, I would straight away receive an email informing me so, and I could just email back a reply. Alternatively, there was always the Disqus Pro app, which collate all the comments, which I would then answer directly through the app.

All in all, maintenance of the blog could be done away from a computer. As long as there was an internet connection, I would be good to go! Long may I stay productive.

Quick stop at Alexis

It has been a long day. Not about the work, but the errand I had to run after coming home from work. First thing, I had to drive Anita to Bangsar to pick up the cake for tomorrow. That done, picked Idlan up from Quran School, and off we went to Great Eastern Mall for some more shopping at Toys'r'Us there, mainly for the tidbits in the goodie bags to be handed tomorrow at Idlan's class party.

By the time we got that sorted out, it was already time for dinner. As usual, it would be pizza for my boys and their favourite pizza joint there was at Alexis on the Ground Floor. Why you may ask? The pizza there was prepared in a wood fire oven. Well, allegedly. They were thin-crusted and nice.. The portion were also reasonable. Not too big, and not too filling either. And between the two of them, they would finish the pizza easily.

I had my usual salad and pasta for dinner there. The rocket and pine nut salad there was highly recommended, although the pasta could be hit and miss. Tonight, my carbonara was good, but Anita seafood pasta - I've forgotten what it was - was not so great. Another favourite of ours were the seafood pasta in parcel. Usually nicely cookers and delicious.

If you were out for a drink, or dinner, around Great Eastern Mall I'd definitely recommend giving Alexis a try. Yes, the price was a bit on the high side. Certainly more expensive than say, Delicious, but with good company, it could be great night out. The musical line-ups during weekends were not too shabby either. Usually jazz-infused and classy. Personally, I have never attended one. Maybe, with the kids on tow, those time where we can visit a jazz bar and chill, may have gone into a hiatus.

Stargate it was

I have never been a big fan of Stargate, but something about Stargate Universe (SGU) series which drew me to it. I was pretty sure it was its parallel with Star Trek Voyager, which I follow during my years in medical school. Both were about a bunch of military type, thrusted into unknown space in a secluded ship to fend for themselves on a long journey back to Earth, something that Battlestar Galactica did very well - another one of my favourite series.

I managed to get the final installment of the series from my usual "dealer". All three DVDs of them, and so far I have finished a couple of them. I was saving the last disc for the weekend. It should be a finale and as expected, they would found Earth. Both in Galactica and Voyager, after going through all the adversities, the endings were rather anticlimactic. Let's hope that this one won't disappoint. The sad thing about SGU was, it just recently got cancelled after a couple of seasons. I must confess that the first few episodes of this second season were rather disappointing and predictable. The character arches were not fully developed, and it was such a drag propelling the whole story forward. It was clear that once the series got canceled, the writers were somewhat liberated. All the characters appeared more matured and complete. It was as if the constraints for character development were fully lifted. Everything went. I would blog after seeing the grand finale and see how everything fell into place ..... So watch this space!

Party preparations

It turned out that preparation for Idlan's party at school this Friday turned out to be more complicated than usual. Initially we wanted to do just a close family affair. Unfortunately, after getting a couple of presents on Monday from his classmates, he went all excited and told his teacher than there would be a class party this Friday! So, we had to conjure up something for it.

This morning, Anita spent a few hours in Bangsar sorting out the cakes and party packs. The pizza were already confirmed from the other night, and all that was left were some drinks and tidbits. Anita was confident everything would be doted for the day, although I had to come home early today to help here pick the cakes up.

After that, it should be Kung Fu Panda on Saturday morning, provided that the weekend ward rounds were sorted out, of course!

The transfer

Before I went to bed tonight, I decided to transfer all the digital photos I took since 2003 into my FireWire Raid drive for safe keeping. Little that I realise that there were more than 30000 of them and it would occupy a handsome 200 GB worth of disc space. Those not counting the ones I deleted prior.

All my children's photographs were archive both here and on another hard drive as well as in the cloud, on my SmugMug account. Precious they are. According to my Mac, it would take around 2 hours for the files to be transferred. So, good night!