† Chameleon Guitar: Acoustic & Electrical Fusion †

An electric guitar is often a preference for the youngsters and of course I understand how excited it'd be to own your personal electric guitar. However it sucks when you realize that electrical guitar is useless without an amp. Its specifically non-applicable for camp fires or beach camping.


The concept of 'all-in-one' guitar has become an aim for many guitar-producing company. Semi-acoustic is one of the inventions. So is it possible to have such 'all-in-one' electric guitar as well?


I believe the Chameleon Guitar, developed at the MIT Media Lab, can provide us the answer. Chameleon Guitar embodies a unique combination of traditional acoustic and modern electrical design. If I were to summarize the whole thing, I would say it looks like an electric guitar, but acts like both electric and acoustic guitar.


According to the official website, the reason behind such design is that the sound generated by the instrument and the physical soundboard plug-in is installed with a digital effects processor inside the guitar body, producing an original sound amplified by digital devices.


In other words, even without an amp, it still can produce a very clear and loud voice, just like an acoustic guitar. The good thing about this guitar is that, there are a variety of sound boards available, making customization possible. On top of that, each different quality or design of the wooden piece can result in different sound effects that many guitar players may feel excited about it.


Further information can be obtained in the video posted here. Source: LabCast

† Great Sleeping Bear By Eiko Ishizawa †

This is something similar to the Bloody Pillow in my previous post, known as the Great Sleeping Bear.

Eiko Ishizawa design this sleeping bag based on the true story of a bear in Alps who was powerful that after a long period of hunting, it was finally hunted down the hunters.

If you think you can keep other people away from you by using this scary sleeping bag, I think you're wrong because you might ended up becoming the center of attraction at the camping site.

† Google Calender: Colors & Events †

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Google Calendar has become my essential daily online planner. It is indeed my important secretary reminding all the things that I need to remember.


The picture above shows my previous version of calender. The daily events are all green in color and personally I think it looks extremely unattractive.


Here's something I've tried out to make your personal calender looks more lively. Simply categorize your events into different group according to colors may be very useful. So how do we go about it?


First of all, you need to create a category simply by clicking on the 'create' word at the '1' shown above. What you need to do next is of course name your desired category and finally click on 'create' calender.


When a category is generated, it will appear at the very left side of your screen. Colors can be selected from a list of colors as shown above.


Finally, you can create your event and choose which group the event should be categorized. As an example of my calender, green color is for the use of my pharmacy courier such as on-call, extended services, reports and etc. Blue color indicates my personal daily events. Purple is my expenditure while pink color is used as the birthday reminder.

† Cytotoxic Drug Reconstitution: Exposure, Spillage †

Cytotoxic drugs are therapeutic agents that inhibit or prevent the function of cells. Such drugs are commonly used in chemotherapy to inhibit the proliferation of cancerous cells. Chemotherapy Drug Reconstitution (CDR) is one of the highly specialized pharmaceutical services performed by the pharmacists only in hospitals that have aseptic rooms, involving preparation and compounding of cytotoxic drugs.

Reasons for concern:
There has been an increase in concern over the potential of cytotoxic drugs to harm personnel who are exposed to them including workers who prepare, administer, or handle cytotoxic drugs. Due to poor selectivity between cancerous cells and normal cells, cytotoxic drugs tend to give several undesirable side effects. It is rather shocking to find out that a measurable levels of cytotoxic drugs have been detected in the hospital compound when cytotoxic drugs were compounded without proper equipments and techniques. Detectable amounts of various cytotoxic drugs in the urine of health care workers were also presented. The hazardous exposure of cytotoxic drugs may cause workers to experience acute symptoms such as mucous membrane irritation, allergic reactions, subjective symptoms including fatigue and dizziness. A long term exposure (occupational) may cause chromosomal damage, which leads to higher risk of delivering malformed babies. Therefore precaution must be followed to minimize such exposures.

Source of exposure:
Workers especially the oncology pharmacists and assistants who compound the drugs, doctors and nurses who administer cytotoxic drugs are most likely to get themselves being exposed via inhalation of drug aerosol, absorption through the skin and very low possibility but undeniably ingestion through contaminated sources. Incidences of needle prick injury may occur if the personnel is not properly trained.

Drug Preparation:
Exposure of cytotoxic drug to the personnel can be minimized during the process of drug preparation through a proper education and training in syringing techniques, as well as the use of appropriate protective equipment and apparatus. It is essential to ensure safe work practices are fully understood and practiced in the premises. Personnel also need to understand the function of each of the equipment (safety cabinet, syringes, gowns, goggles, mask...) and apparatus (syringes, needles, filters, butterfly clip...) used. Practical technique is important in this field as it determines how well a personnel is able to provide a spillage-free drug transferal and delivery while performing closed-system drug syringing.


Drug Administration:
Nurses and medical officers may be involved in administering cytotoxic drug to the patients. Special precautions should be taken while performing cytotoxic drug administration because poor delivery technique may cause leakage or spillage. Therefore it is important to make sure that personnel who perform drug administration are well trained. Uncooperative patients can be a problem during administration, for example, an agitated or mentally unprepared patient who refused to undergo cytotoxic drug treatment and this increases like-hood of spillage. Thus it is very important for the pharmacists to ensure each of the patients are ready for treatment.


Spill Management:
Spillage of cytotoxic drugs should be handled with utmost care. It is important to have a proper procedure getting ready all time and whenever spillage occurs, the cleaning process can be taken place within shortest period of time. Every oncology ward should have at least a box of chemo spill kit standby for use. Whenever spillage occurs, all patients and medical workers should be evacuated from the area and warning sign boards should be placed at all entrance. The medical personnel should immediately put on the chemo protective gowns and equipments provided prior to cleaning of the spillage area.


Disposal of Wastes:
Residuals, syringes, vials, swab, gloves or IV drip bottles that have contacted with cytotoxic drug should be disposed and properly identified. Bags and containers, or even sharp wastes that are used to transport cytotoxic drugs should be designed purple in color. Before discarding the wastes, it is also important to mark the container with a "CYTOTOXIC WASTE" label.

Many reports have shown the relationship between cytotoxic exposure and risk to the personnel's health. Therefore a country's Ministry of Health should always think about health professions who work or having themselves exposed in this field.

My point of view:
A recent debate about cutting the health profession's allowance in Malaysia is rather disappointing. From my point of view as a health professional working in the government sector, I hope that the ministry would seriously think twice before making their decision.

† Futurama: Bender's Game †

I bet everyone knows Futurama. I've always been a Futurama fan and I enjoy watching every single episodes of Futurama in the past. A few of the worth watching classic episodes were 'Roswell That Ends Well', 'Iron Chef', 'Big Piece of Garbage' and etc.

Recently I've finished watching 'Futurama - Bender's Game', one of the new long episodes produced in late year 2008. The author of this episode is of course, always the full time Simpsons and Futurama author Matt Groening.

This animated movie features Bender the robot, who has always been a friend to the human race, even if he won't admit it as many people who follow previous episodes of Futurama. However, he still takes great pride in believing that he's better than everyone on the planet.

In this particular episode, Bender's pride was in danger when he feared that he can't have the imaginative ability like human. As Bender joined the kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, his ability of imagination expanded and eventually his brain waves were amplified...

... by some 'chrono-quantum physic' kind of wave emission emitted from a crystal that it eventually affected Fry and the others, pulling them into Bender's world of imaginary. In the other world of imaginary, Bender was a noble knight named Titanus. And interestingly, Fry was named Frydo (Frodo?) while Leila was named Leigola (Legolas?).

In fact, plenty of the imaginary world storyline mimics Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but of course, Matt Groening has twisted it in a funny manner. As an example of one of the typical Matt's jokes found in this movie: "Fear not Titanus for we still have one hope! The Cave of Hopelessness!"

Well, I wouldn't say this is a great show but I'm sure many Futurama fans enjoy how Matt Groening create ridiculous in the episodes of Futurama, but I would recommend this show to those who love to watch silly show just for the sake of some inside jokes.

† 2012 Doom's Day †

This is the first day screening of the movie '2012' and I'm lucky enough to get the ticket in time. This view of the poster truly attracts my attention to watch this movie.

The storyline of this movie is rather simple: ancient Mayan's prophecy has come true and doom's day is happening in year 2012.

Where else can everyone escape to? Earth quakes, landslides, uncontrolled volcanic explosions, tsunami are happening everywhere.

The whole show was about how the main character Jackson Curtis escapes from the catastrophic events with his family members. Simple storyline, but exciting! Don't forget about the ending theme 'Time For Miracles' sang by Adam Lambert. This piece of song has a pretty good melody.

† Bon Voyage Mr Leong Weng Choy †

This is a special dinner organized by Cheau Huey in order to celebrate Mr. Leong Weng Choy, our very senior pharmacist in Hospital Kuantan (HTAA) whose going over to Sabah in response to his U52 promotion.

Mr. Leong has always been a very hardworking pharmacist in our hospital. Gentle, stoic, serious and discipline are words best to describe his personality.

A number of us attended Mr. Leong's farewell dinner. Those who attended Mr. Leong and his family members, HTAA pharmacists including Mr. Zakhi, Pn. Mahani, Pn. Rohaya, Chee Meng, Khien Yung, Wei Siang, Pek Leng, Jia Yi, Boon Peow, Kit Yeng, Shal Ling, Laj, Michelle, Huey San and Ain.

As it is shown in the photos above, everyone is paying their full attention to Mr. Leong not only because they respect Mr. Leong, most importantly also because Mr. Leong speaks extremely soft all the time. Any exogenous input of voice will have the tendency of making Mr. Leong's voice becoming unheard.

This is a limited edition of Mr. Leong with his 'V' sign. On the right is his son laughing at his father. Its sad to know that Mr. Leong is going to leave us but we do feel happy for his U52 promotion. Therefore, we would like to wish Mr. Leong all the best working in Sabah and take care always!

† Suemitsu & The Suemith: Sagittarius †

Piano has been a classical, yet one of the very prime instruments in the modern musical world. No matter how drastic the musical era has changed from ballad to jazz, from jazz to rock, from rock to metal, piano is always there.

This is a post that I'm going to talk about an interesting pianist whose name is Suemitsu Atushi from Hiroshima Prefecture, graduated from Nagoya Music University.

SUEMITSU & THE SUEMITH is the solo project of his. Suemitsu began experimenting with rock and music theory while in college. Apart from playing rock music, he also traveled to Paris for a year to polish his skills as a classically trained pianist.

He became well-known when he participated in Disney's 2004 project. This collaborative album was a collection of Disney song covers from various artists and Suemitsu was one of them. On that album he simply went by the name, The Suemith, and performed a cover of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.

Recently, one of his song with the title "Sagittarius" really attracted me so much. Simply by listening to its piano intro blending along with the strings and bass guitar in B♭, and then followed by the drums really made the whole song's intro sound so perfect. I have to admit that I've never heard such perfect and wonderful music intro in my whole life before. However I think the chorus and the ending of this song can't match the perfectness of the intro.

Suemitsu's has shown his great potential via piano and I think he'll be the next eye-catching pianist vocal in future. Although his style of playing the piano is so much different from my all time favourite Joe Hisaishi, his unique way of expressing his feeling through piano really has made him a pianist who differs from the others.

Related post:

Joe Hisaishi

† Buffered & Metered Earning In Nuffnang? †

Everyone has always been talking about making money online via Nuffnang and out of curiosity, I've finally tried it out last month. The concept is pretty simple: update your blog, and Nuffnang will try to get different companies to place their advertisements (ads) in your blog. Thats where your income comes in.


I'm using Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome but strangely I couldn't view my own ads for both Nuffnang and Google Adsense even until now. I thought I've pasted the wrong html code but apparently I was firmly reassured by the Nuffnang help-desk crew that there's no problem about it. So what I would do is to wait patiently.


Few weeks later when I take a glance at my Nuffnang page under the section 'Earnings', I've got a shock to see these ads shown on my page and surprisingly, 60% of my blog's readers per week are Americans. The question is, whats 'buffered' and 'metered' earnings? From my point of view, 'buffered' earning might be a trial kind of ads-placement in your blog before the companies officially launch their ads on your blog which is later to be measured in the 'metered' earning. Its pretty important to monitor the blog that they are going to place their ads into and I guess that is why they are doing such double-layered monitoring.


No doubt it would be quite impossible for a 'blog-for-fun' kind of blogger like me to earn huge money via Nuffnang, but still, it is always better than none. Thanks to Nuffnang and most importantly, all the readers (yes I mean you) who support my blog.