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May 12 Packing up and moving to wordpress! Click here to go to my new blog! Hey people, it’s been awhile since my last post. So after a lot of thinking, I’ve decided to move my blog to wordpress. It’s sleeker, easier to manage, and is packed with features. Windows Live Spaces, while cool, is restricted compared to wordpress. I won’t be abandoning Windows completely, though. In the long run, the Skydrive uploads will be through there since I can use PowerPoint Presentations and whatnot. Text posts, however, will mostly be via wordpress. In other notes, check out my links. You’ll notice that I’ve set up a Project COE official blog. Due to our CMS site being delayed, our staff will use this blog for their E3 updates. Be on the lookout for more updates as the days go by. Life has been good, thank God. A bit on the busy side, though. While the attendance in my current Obstetrics and Gynecology rotation isn’t as harsh as the others, there’s a lot of studying to catch up on. Our EOP exam will be in two weeks and a half. Sadly, I haven’t started reading seriously yet. My Post-partum Hemorrhage presentation is the only big work I’ve done thus far. As always, later days, people May 02 Skydrive Medical Presentation Upload: Post-partum Hemorrhage This is an Obstetrics and Gynecology presentation that I just, erm, presented today to my fellow students for our PBL class. Had an all nighter with this one. My pal helped with a couple of slides while I refined everything. As usual, click on the public folder on the left sidebar and download the PPH Final file...and keep in mind that you need Powerpoint 2007 or PowerPoint Viewer to view this file. Enjoy. :) April 30 Creed and Limp Bizkit Reunite! Old but recent news. I'm going to kill myself for bringing this topic
up, since a lot of people think both bands are "overrated".
So the original members of each band kissed and made up...and both are planning new albums and tours. I practically grew up with these bands...I love rock thanks to them. So I'm glad that they're back again, especially Creed. I'm sure millions of fans will be happy as well. Yeah, I know Fred Durst and Scott Stapp were HUGE asses back in the day, hence why a lot of people hate their respective bands. Looks like they've changed for the better, though. I mean, even their own band mates hated them. In the end, both singers are responsible for bringing their bands back together so they must know about their mistakes. Additionally, I don't like when people hate the material just because of the personalities of people who come up with it. Stuff like Durst being a "rap wannabe" and Stapp being an "Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam" imitator sorts of annoys me. I really don't see those as valid criticisms per-se; just backlash for hating how bad they acted. On the other hand, it's really hard to separate the person from what he does for a living...so I can understand why this backlash occurred with both bands.
Mainstream music can rock...Creed and Limp Bizkit prove so. While
they're not the greatest bands on Earth and not the most original, they
were great back in the day and I love them. Can't wait for their new
material. You can't deny that their band mates have a lot of skill even
if you're not fond of the front men. Creed's Guitarist, Mark Tremonti,
is amazing. Just youtube him and see him in action. Or better yet, here's a video as an example: April 29 Pimping out a friend's blog! DaBloog's "Thoughts of the Day" Blog Here's how this whole thing started. Dabboog, one of my dearest friends, constantly shares with our gang some interesting "thought of the day" discussions which I think are really stimulating. Recently, he started thinking up of a way to put these ideas onto paper...web paper if you know what I mean. He mentioned an old blog he had for a college project years back, so I suggested to him to revive that instead of starting from scratch and start pumping up new material. In short, you guys should really click this link and read his stuff. Short, sweet, sentimental, and to the point. Moreover, "DaBloog" has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Combining his alias with blogging is practically seamless! Thus far, there are two new posts. He's going to try to put these up daily if possible. Speaking of which, I'm thinking of moving on to wordpress. While I've grown fond of Windows Live Spaces for the past three years of blogging, I think I may get more readers and comments if I move to wordpress since it's been around longer. Finally, I leave you with yet another idea from Dabboog. Personalizing my posts even more by taking a picture as I write this. Enjoy!  April 28 My Break in Dubai!This break was a lot of firsts for my gang and I; this is the first time I travel outside of summer, this is the first time I travel to Dubai, and this is the first time we travel as a group. It was an amazing experience from start to finish. 5 days felt like 2 weeks because of the amount of activities we've done. The primary reason we were going in the first place was to attend a dear friend's engagement party at Sharjah, which was really cool. I'm happy for the guy.  We decided to stay at a hotel called Qamar-Addeen, next to Dubai Mall. Really felt like a 5-star hotel even though it was 4. Very cheap to stay at yet doesn't look that way at all. Everyone was nice, the room was cool, and the service was excellent. Two of our other friends arrived the day after primarily due to buisness, so they bunked over at another friend...yet they both had free time as well so we were together most of the time. Went to all the malls you can think of; Ibn Battota, Dubai Mall, Emirates Mall, and Festival Mall. Great stuff. Did most of my shopping at Virgin Megastore. Found a lot of cool videogame t-shirts.  Our other activities consisted of the shooting range, paintball, Atlantis' water park, cool cafes, movies, and awesome dinners. The only thing I regret about this trip is that we didn't get to catch a lot of movies. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens and the new Fast and Furious; both were really good. Sadly, I couldn't catch The Watchmen or Push. However, the other activities compensated for these losses. The shooting range was by far the coolest one we've done. To hold a real weapon and fire at a target is so surreal. I kept shaking but managed to be accurate enough after my first round. I didn't really enjoy paintball 'cause I didn't know what was going on half of the time...feels a lot like an FPS multiplayer with rules like Capture the Flag and Deathmatch and such. The waterpark was a lot of fun. Lots of nice rides and some interesting technology. There's this chipped watch you wear which you can put money in and buy stuff instead of keeping your cash in your pocket. It also works as your locker key. Two cafes that come to mind are Chill Out and the Golf Club. The former had a unique concept; you're basically in a fridge where everything is made of ice...you had to wear coats in order to stay in. The latter was very relaxing and the view of the golf greens were amazing...I just wish we had time to try out the driving range. Finally, we had dinner at two amazing places. The first was a Japanese restaurant that was in Emirates Towers, and the second was a Thai one at Qasur Hotel. Best places I've eaten at ever. All in all, this was a break I really needed and enjoyed so much. Thanks God. Now I'm pumped up for my upcoming studies. April 16 Out with the old and in with the new...I just got my pediatrics EOP results a few days back. 41/50! Thank God. That has to be the highest mark I've ever received in an exam as a Medical Student, introductory year not included. I got a 7.5/10 in the clinical exam, btw. Could've done better... stuttered in the Asthma short case but did really well in Rhumatic Fever. So I've just started my OB rotation. A week in and I'm feeling relieved. Attendance isn't as harsh as pediatrics so I have some free time on my hands...in addition to more reading time as soon as I start grinding on those books. I haven't been doing much these days, though. Gaming has been on the down low aside from my recently-purchased Nintendo DSi. Cool little device and a nice upgrade for me considering that I skipped on the Lite and still have my Phat one. Bird & Beans and Art Style: AQUILA are nice addicting DSiWare games to pass the time. Let's hope I start getting excited soon so I could write more for COE! I have a friend who invited me to his pre-wedding a.k.a. Bachelor Party over at Dubai next weekend. Thinking of going. Talk to you guys later. April 06 Pediatrics 6th Year EOP: Day 1 Went really well, thank God. Most of the MCQs were common and the two essays consisted a case of Hereditary Spherocytosis and short notes on a child with stridor. Regarding the former, a lot of students didn't get the "Sphereocytosis" diagnosis. Instead, they opted to answer with "Sickle Cell Anemia/Sequestration Crisis" or "B-Thallasemia" major. I think that all of these answers are correct considering the "vagueness" of the case itself. If you remember or read my previous blog on our 5th year final exam on pediatrics, you'll understand what I mean. So on the stridor essay, they wanted four differentials along with important history, examination, investigations, and management notes. The usual differential consists of Foreign Body, Epiglottitis, Croup, and Laryngomalacia. I opted not to put the latter one since it's much more common in infants obviously (the case mentioned that the patient was one year old). Instead, I wrote tracheoesophageal fistula as my final differential. Most of the students I asked didn't really feel my choice, yet google says otherwise. TE-fistula can present with stridor and a history of choking, so hopefully it should be right on the money along with everything else. My clinical exam isn't tomorrow...it's the day after. Most of my friends have theirs tomorrow so hopefully I can get a general idea of what cases I'm about to face. Note that 6th year EOPs consist of two short cases...which is sort of a brick wall for me. See, with long cases, I can freely stay with the patient by myself for an hour and ask/perform as much as I want, then present my case to the professors. With short cases, however, you immediately start with the profs by your side, asking you to take a short history or examine a certain system while they observe and eventually discuss the findings/plan with you. Takes about 15 minutes with each case. Kind of overwhelming if your thoughts are jumbled. Let's hope I'm in fine shape by Wednesday. Over and out, people. I'll keep you guys updated. April 01 New Skydrive Upload + Square-Enix USA's PR downfallThis time I've uploaded one of my older presentations on Amenorrhea, done during my 5th year OB rotation. I actually revised it when I retried the course earlier this year with a lot of new info and comparison tables. Check out the public folder on Skydrive. Other than that, I'm going to be on a short hiatus because of an upcoming pediatrics exam next Monday. Gaming-wise, Justin and I finished a Star Ocean 4 co-op video review, but sadly Square-Enix USA are being HUGE asses about copyright footage. Thus far, we've uploaded the video twice, and S-E keeps deleting it. They've been the only company having problems with this thus far...what's ironic is this video is free advertisement for this company. Additionally, we have three other S-E videos from Tim...so why are they being so picky about this one? For the past few years, S-E USA's PR has been crap to us despite COE being one of their biggest supporters. Jarrod has written so many S-E imports, and we've covered as much S-E games as possible through the years. In return, they're not even supporting us as a site with games...in addition to taking offense on imports and footage for some mysterious reason. That's all for now. Talk to you guys later. March 22 Skydrive Experiment: Developmental Delay PresentationAlong with the revamped layout, you'll notice a bunch of folders packed up on the right side of the page. Click on public if you're interested in downloading a pediatric presentation about developmental delay done by my friend and I during this rotation. We weren't the ones who covered Investigation and treatment, hence why they're missing from the presentation. Note that you can only view this if you have Microsoft Office 2007. Not sure if 2003 users can use the file format. Enjoy. :) Late Night Blogging with AFM!This is what I do when I'm not sleepy. It's 3:30 AM and I have no idea how I'm going to wake up for uni tomorrow.
So my 6th year pediatric rotation has been going somewhat well. I feel that I'm somewhat late in terms of knowledge due to missing two weeks of my rotation...the reason being my 5th year resit exams. Still, I managed to catch up well enough. EOP exams are in two weeks, though...and I'm kind of stressing out. At times, I just don't feel like attending at all these days 'cause I'd like to catch up with studying. Plus, I'm starting to grow tired of it in general. The routine of attending and whatnot.
I had a nice high-school reunion dinner at Thursday. I really enjoyed seeing old faces again. Everyone's busy with their jobs right now and a few of them are engaged, married, and even starting a family. We discussed on uni vs. job life, and they've been telling me to take as much time with uni as I can 'cause once you start a job, you'll start missing the old days. Really funny how it's the same case with uni vs. high school, eh?
Going back to medicine for a bit, intern applications just started. I've been hearing that people like me who came late into 6th year are apparently going to have delayed intern programs as well. On one hand, I like hiatuses...yet they scare me if I don't plan them well. You know when you have a lot of free time and you just get addicted to "wasting" it on hobbies and what have you? The "medicine" side of me starts to rot, so my first foray into internship won't be as fresh as I want it to be. However, if I plan a bit of studying during free time, it's all good. I'm looking far into the future, though. Remember, I also talked about another "hiatus" during this summer in between my 6th year program due to retrying some of my 5th year courses. I won't take my finals and graduate until February/March 2010 while everyone else finishes at June of this year.
Speaking of hobbies, Star Ocean: The Last Hope on the 360 has been chalking up most of my time. Insanely addictive game indeed. I'm a huge fan of the series (except the disgusting 3rd installment on the PS2) so it's nice to see all the traditions revised and tuned for the latest sequel. I'm in the 2nd disk right now and just finished Roak's storyline, which pays nice homages to the first Star Ocean. Not done with the planet yet, though. Plenty of sidequesting to do. As you can see in my achievement list, I've unlocked more than 50% of all chests and more than 30% of all quests, which I'm proud of. The Battle System, Item Creation, and Character Micromanagement work a lot better in this sequel, while Private Actions suffer a bit due to the linear storyline and fixed main characters compared to the first two Star Oceans. Speaking of characters, some of the voice acting and dialogue is off and their facial expressions are extremely limited for a next-gen game. It's sad to see that Final Fantasy X has better facial work and this game.
I've been playing some MadWorld Wii on the side. I think it's the most violent game I've ever played. Period. 'Sickenly' violent. To me, the violence is extremely hilarious...but most of my friends are shocked and even grossed out by this game. However, it's possibly the best beat 'em up I've played since Turtles in Time for the SNES. Kills are satisfying and the environments are interactive. Finally, I like the fact that it's the first Black and White game ever with blood being colored red...that's an artistic statement right there. PlatinumGames have a lot of guts indeed.
In terms of multiplayer gaming, Street Fighter IV is our new game. It's fun and it's age old mechanics are still solid. Fine-tuned bars, EX and special moves, and focus attacks add a layer of depth to nostalgia. Just don't expect something as innovative as Soul Calibur IV for example. What you're playing is Street Fighter II with next-gen bells and whistles and some streamlined SFIII/Alpha elements. I also don't get why everyone's saying that it's very easy to access. Quite the contrary, this is a really hardcore fighter just like its previous installments. Timing and inputting your moves need to be really precise, even more-so than HD Remix...and the default PS3 controller really doesn't help. I hear the 360 version is even worse 'cause of it's cheap d-pad, but the PS3 can be just as bad at times. Capcom really didn't do a good job in porting Arcade controls into the d-pad. In addition, there are some moves that are just plain ridiculous to perform as usual, particularly Guile and Vega's supers/ultras and most of Zangief's attacks. HD Remix really does a good job in recognizing d-pad inputs and even "casualizes" some moves, especially Zangief. See, when I look at HD Remix's revisions, I just wish that SFIV took all of that and implemented them on the real sequel. It's nice to see old SFII characters again when it's all said and done. It's sad that Vega got broken in the transition, though. What's with that slow-ass roll and useless "remove mask/claw" moves? The new ones are nicely designed as well, with the exception of Seth the cheeseball.
That's about it for me in this post. I'll leave you guys with my recently-written Killzone 2 review for COE. Catch you later. February 15 Post-exam laziness disorderPhew, it's been awhile, guys. I finished my resit finals a week ago and I've been taking a personal breather ever since. You only realize that these exams take a lot out of you as soon as you finish. Right now, I really don't feel like looking at a book or going to any wards. But I need to pick up the pace soon.
I've just gotten word yesterday that I've passed these exams, thank God. So I can officially move into 6th year and start my pediatrics rotation. The problem is, the results have not been officially posted yet, so my name has not been assigned into a 6th year group yet. I've taken the matters into my own hands and signed up for pediatrics with a group, but it'll take awhile until my name is officially on their list. After all, some of the resit students finished at Wednesday (Family Medicine). Thus, I'm taking this opportunity to rest up and bum around.
The exams themselves were pretty straight-forward stuff. MCQs, essays, short cases for Medicine and OSCE stations for Obstetrics. I panicked in one short case during the medicine...and there was a lame incident during our OB written. There's this professor who's extremely mental that cut our official time off by half an hour! Our papers had two hours written all over them, yet he says that it's not true and robbed us from our time. Thus, I had to go through the MCQs really quick and I couldn't get to do one essay out of two. I think that I did well despite that....but that half an hour meant a lot to us nonetheless. In the end, we get doctors blaming us for not passing and not getting good marks when it's them who should be blamed in the first place. I can take criticism well to improve myself and such...but the circumstances surrounding my success must be good in order for me to shine. I'll try to cope as much as I can, but sadly there are some characters that you can't cope with at all.
Haven't been doing much single-player gaming surprisingly. I'm about done with Star Ocean: First Departure so I can move into Second Evolution, which is a port of one of my favorite PS1 games of all time. Haven't done that yet. I did finish Crisis Core, though...which I was extremely impressed with. The ending was bittersweet, and the game itself is possibly the best release for the PSP since launch. There's word that Killzone 2 may have an early release here today, so I'll keep on checking until I get my hands on that game. I was really impressed by its demo, though.
January 24 Exams approaching... Hey, dudes and dudets. It's been awhile. It's that time again. The first semester really flew by fast. I remember my first day as if it happened yesterday. So, our five-week Medicine rotation was not bad at all. Since I'm retrying this course, I got to meet some great new colleagues. I just wish that I can memorize their names. The professors that gave us our sessions were good people as well. Very helpful. I did suffer from a bit of an inferiority complex during this course compared to my OB retry. The students that were with me this time around knew a lot, so I felt a bit behind at times. Now to the exam barrage. Got my End of Rotation exam at Tuesday and Wednesday. Then my resit finals start at Saturday immediately after. Luckily, my first final is Medicine, so as long as I do well in my EOP I'll be covered. About a week after I have OB, more than enough time to revise the subject. Then as soon as I pass these Inshallah I'll be in 6th year. My schedule for that year is a bit confusing as I'm 6 months behind my original pack...but that's a story for another blog post. So studying is going a bit sluggish to be honest. I'm all over the place. The good thing is that I've been continuously reading throughout the rotation, so most of the stuff should be in my head somewhere. The bad news is that I didn't and still don't have a particular system to my reading. It's just that Medicine is so overwhelming you just can't get your head around everything, especially in 5 weeks. Other problem I'm going through right now is reading for the exam versus reading to understand. Before starting this blog I was catching up with Neurology, the motor neuron disorders in particular. I never, ever, fully understood them...as I'm weak in Neuro in the first place. Each and every time I just go through that stupid table that compares Upper and Lower Motor Neuron Lesion and put it in my short-term memory. Right now, however, I decided out of a whim to understand the topic so I'm tackling the Peripheral Nervous System for a bit to do some background reading. My friends will kill me if they ever find out I'm doing that 'cause it's crunch time...but I'm doing it anyway. I should be reading common essays, MCQs, "tricks of the trade" kind of stuff...but I'm not in the mood to do so for some reason. Sigh...makes me wonder if there's anyone out there suffering from the same problem. That's it for now. Back to studying. I'll blog my exam progress if I have free time. Later days. December 31 Diving in...Whohoo. Nice to see at least Jarrod reading my blog constantly. Thanks buddy. :P
First off, a happy Arabic and English new year to everyone. It's cool that there's just a few days between the two calendars. Easier to keep up with the dates in my case.
So in the end, I opted not to attend with my 6th year buddies and wait for my rotation. That's what laziness does to you. I'm a week in my Medicine rotation, and it's going good so far. We've got nice professors for our group...one of them FINALLY made me understand the interpretation of respiratory sounds and its pathology. This has always been a confusing topic for me. Glad it was cleared up. The group I'm in has a bunch of nice people. Thank God for that as well. After all, one must be in a good environment in order to study. Speaking of studying, I've started my reading early on from Davidson a.k.a. one of the main big resources in Medicine. Going to keep using this book until two weeks before my EOP exam, then switch to the smaller stuff like Oxford and Case Files. Hopefully I speed up my reading and cover as much as possible. The thing about Medicine is that it's so overwhelming compared to the other rotations. Professors expect a lot of us during only 5 weeks and it's simply impossible to cover it all unless you're reading 8 hours a day, something which I really can't do.
Even my 6th year buddies are finding this subject just too much, despite having 8 weeks of rotation time. The reason for that is this new stupid system our faculty implemented this year for this rotation. Too confusing, too demanding, and biased...thus not enough time to actually read. What I hate about this the most is the fact that we're actually getting marks for signatures. Meaning, you have this attendance and skill paper, which have you go around like an idiot looking for consultants to sign that you attended X clinical teaching or observed X clinical skill being performed. That's a load of crap right there. Sometimes, consultants are just too busy to be with 6h years for some reason...so a lot of days just go by wasted in the hospital as you're looking for someone to sign or spoon-feed you despite not wanting to be spoon-fed. If being a medical student is mostly about teaching yourself, then how come we have these high-school rules that involve signing shit? Talk about contradictory.
Gaming-wise, I haven't touched my consoles in awhile...just a bit of Little Big Planet yesterday. I was thinking of buying the new MGS4 pack 'cause it sounds like fun, but I'll do that later. Finally tried out LocoRoco 2 yesterday. The level design is A LOT better and far more engrossing than the first game considering that the prequel had some good ideas. It's just that LR2 has a lot more "abilities" and "innovations" implemented in each level. The first one took awhile until some unique stuff popped up. My only complaint is the recycled environments and music...glad that those were solid to begin with or else I would've been a bit upset.
Currently, we at COE are hard at work in our site redesign and Game of the Year awards. Justin S. and Eddy are battling for the better font while some of us including me make our inputs about their concepts. Justin Joseph is going to tally our GOTY votes as soon as possible, and then we begin our write-ups. Sadly, Banjo was the last review I wrote a few weeks back. I still have the usual stuff in mind but am not really in the writing mood. Stay tuned to this blog as I update you guys on the goods. December 14 Break's Over...My long break is unofficially over. Tomorrow, I'm going to attend with my 6th year med buddies for two weeks until my own rotation starts. It was great while it lasted, though. Three weeks of relaxing is more than enough to make me start studying again.
My activities were nothing out of the ordinary. Friends, gaming, and gaming with friends. Soul Calibur IV remains to be the game we're playing the most. Brawl is sadly getting phased out, while newcomer Call of Duty 5 proves to be fun. Trying to catch up with Gears 2 and Resistance 2 co-op wise, offline and online respectively. From a single player standpoint, the new Banjo-Kazooie has been occupying most of my time. Wrote a review for it recently. Check it out here. Of course, the original Banjo-Kazooie for XBLA is a blast to play as well. Glad Rare had that pre-order offer going on or else I wouldn't have picked up that download early.
Speaking of downloads, Street Fighter II HD Remix is another game that I've been playing a lot of recently. Great stuff. Fond memories. I've never been a hardcore player of the series but I really appreciate the modified tweaks to an age-old game. Even though I don't understand most of the "Dip Switch" settings and am not aware of all the tweaks, the fact that the game has been slightly rebalanced is making me want to play more professionally. The A.I. is EXTREMELY hard this time around, though...very human-like. Loving the audiovisual overhaul obviously. Udon's art is great, and OC ReMix landed a huge gig by rearranging the game's soundtrack. It's not everyday that you see the work of fans actually being in the game, so I'm glad Capcom hired OCR in the end. Great remixes, guys. Seriously. You can download the tracks for free over at their site...doesn't get any better than that.
I noticed that the UK got a lot of early game releases over the past few weeks, BTW. Flower, Sun and Rain for DS, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon DS, and LocoRoco 2 for the PSP are out there! I'm going to try and import the first two, but LocoRoco 2 is already in my PSP's memory stick. Even though it's been released late November, I just noticed that the UK-based PSP PlayStation Store has a digital copy as well...so I took that route immediately. Still haven't played it yet. Look for impressions and possibly a UK Import Review soon.
COE activity is on fire these days. We're planning our Game of the Year feature as we speak. Also, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that we're doing for a complete overhaul of the site. All I can say is, it's a about freggin' time. Seriously, this revamp will make all our lives much easier, especially Jarrod's...who has been slaving on obsolete HTML coding since the beginning. After we're done with the technicalities, you're going to see a better site with even more activity 'cause Jarrod won't need to code anymore and we can upload our stuff faster. November 23 Still Alive! I'm talking about myself and the new video game track single for Mirror's Edge. Lisa Miskovsky is responsible for "Still Alive", which is an awesome radio-friendly piece with excellent vocals. You can download it for free on the PlayStation Network. See, a lot of developers should be treating video game music like this. Give fans a chance to own the track, whether it's free or paid. Look out for our COE Holiday Buyer's Guide, compiled and edited by our EiC Justin Joseph. All of us regulars contributed in the writing. November 16 Wow...Talk about breaking the silence, eh? Once again, I apologize for the lack of updates. Reasons are the same as before: friends, struggling with medical life, and not being in the mood to write. I'm not exactly "struggling" with being a medical student this time, thank God. As I've said before, I'm currently retrying 5th year this term on two subjects/rotations. Once I'm done with the Medicine rotation, I'll move onto 6th year in the second term. I just finished my Obstetrics and Gynecology rotation last Wednesday. I've done extremely well in my exams, thank God. I guess my elective in Glasgow gave me more confidence 'cause my oral exam went a lot better than expected. Had a patient who had rupture of membranes but didn't deliver the fetus, but was not sure of her Gestational age, so the diagnosis was either PROM or false labor. My written exam was great as well. Lots of common MCQs and straight-forward SAQs (one was about pre-eclampisa and the other was infertility). Patiently waiting for my results. Right now I've got about 5 weeks of free time until my medicine rotation, but what I'm going to do is take a week or two off then start attending with my 6th year buddies in Medicine in order to get a head start on things. I've been catching up on a lot of games as of late. Currently, my friends and I are ADDICTED to Soul Calibur IV. I'm honestly not a fighter person, but the training mode in this game is so intuitive you'll be playing like a pro in no time. My fav characters are currently Cervantes, Yoshimitsu, and Seigfried. Single-player-wise, it's been LittleBigPlanet for the PS3 and Star Ocean for the PSP. Awesome stuff. I also just got ANOTHER Xbox 360 to get ready for Banjo. I pray to God that it does not red ring on me because that'll basically make me lose hope on Microsoft all together. Another game that I started playing was Resistance 2. I have to be honest; I'm extremely dissapointed so far. The first Resistance had a robust offline experience with campaign co-op and 4-player splitscreen competitive. With the sequel, the developers scrapped offline play all together. No campaign co-op and no splitscreen multiplayer. Yeah, I know about that new co-op campaign that's seperate from the main one, but offline play just plain sucks with that one. There's just no story whatsoever, levels are kind of boring, and 2-player splitscreen is always at 4:3 even if you have widescreen. I'm sure online play is fun, but offline it's just stupid and confusing. It's too bad because the single player story kicks so much ass...it just begs to be played in co-op. Last thing I wrote for COE was a review of Wipeout HD a month back. I want to get back into that writing groove again. Look forward to a review of Kirby Super Star Ultra soon. :) September 25 Broken Silence...Haven't written anything in a long while...and I don't have a good excuse about it. I've been lazy and preoccupied with my free time (how ironic) and that's about it. Ramadan has been great. I can't believe that it's going to be over in five days. Makes you regret wasted time of doing nothing. I've been spending time with family and friends mostly. Gaming-wise, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only single-player game that I've been fully engrossed in. Amazing from start to finish. Enjoyed every single thing about this game and now I realize why it's been given perfect scores across the board. Sure, we can nitpick the hell out of it, but it's sad to give a game as good as this one a 9.9 just because of these small problems. My personal nitpicks include; should've been more interactive cut-scenes and less Deus Ex Machina plot points. Expect a special podcast about this game in the near future. Multiplayer gaming has been the norm; Brawl, Brawl, and more Brawl...although we recently added Soul Calibur IV to our list. Fun game. Vader rocks. I've been writing a couple of previews for COE, namly Wario Land Wii, Kirby DS, and Sonic Chronicles. So go check those out. I'm in the process of writing my Crisis Core review. I also need to participate in one of our podcasts soon. Before of sign out, I'd like to talk about the vocal contest I participated in a while back. So contestants are given a track and each of us sing, write the lyrics, and create their own melodies and harmonies. I had a lot of fun recording my stuff. Came in 4th place. Check it out: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17574 SwordBreaker - Ode to Medical Student Later days, everyone. August 31 Another video blog?Yes, yet another video from yours truly. I talk about criticism in the game industry and how we respond and react to it. More personal than the last video. Enjoy.
PS: I need to count how many times I've said "you know" in this video. Tend to do that when I get excited. August 29 My 2nd Video Blog!
Whohoo! It's me again. Well...it's less of a random blog right now and more of an organized topic, but at least it relates to my current situation right now. Enjoy my ranting on Gaming on the Go. Hopefully, you find it helpful.
I also got to play around with youtube's beta Annotations feature. Keep in mind that these only work when you're watching from youtube's page in the standard quality version. So I suggest you click on the video itself so that you head to youtube and check those out. August 26 The Controversy of Endocarditis Prophylaxis -- A medical essay by me! I wrote this essay for my supervising professor during my cardiology elective and I've decided to share it with everyone. Enjoy. Organizations such as the American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have published several studies surrounding the issue of prophylaxis against Infective Endocarditis (IE). In turn, there have been many guideline revisions pertaining to this topic. Thus, controversy ensues. That’s putting it very generally, however. The upcoming paragraphs will explain the underlying reasons for these several revisions and the controversy that surrounds this very practice. Before going into details, it is important that we talk about the recent revised guidelines of endocarditis prophylaxis. AHA’s 2007 revision states that only the highest risk groups should receive prophylactic drugs against IE, which currently include; patients with valvulopathies post heart transplant, specific congenital heart diseases, past history of endocarditis, and certain dental procedures such as tooth extraction. In 1997, AHA’s guidelines were broader, as groups were categorized into high risk, medium risk, low risk, and ‘not recommended for prophylaxis’. NICE, on the other hand, has quite a different revision yet echoes AHA’s “broad-to-specific” movement. As of March 2008, NICE guidelines state that prophylaxis should not be given to adults and children with structural cardiac defects at risk of IE who are undergoing dental and non-dental interventional procedures. According to NICE, IE prophylaxis can only be offered to patients with sites of suspected infection and certain dental procedures. NICE’s previous guidelines were similar to AHA’s ’97 as prophylaxis was more broadly offered before this recent revision. In other words, the past guidelines are almost the complete opposite of the current guidelines. The most important question that comes to mind is, “how exactly did these organizations get to this ‘broad-to-specific’ train of thought?” The answer to this question is not simple, for this is what basically caused the controversy in the first place. You may read about various claims of benefits for this ‘broad-to-specific’ movement and even studies that back these claims up. The fact of the matter is that there’s very little evidence that supports both the current and previous guidelines. Most of the so-called studies are case-controlled and not randomized. Additionally, most of these studies are performed on animal models because the rarity and severity of IE prevent studies on humans. Indeed, all these changes and revisions are mostly based on expert opinion. Let’s get into the specifics of these claims and arguments. Experts tend to focus on three main points when it comes to IE prophylaxis: a) antibiotic effectiveness, b) categories of high risk groups, and c) the association between the high risk groups and IE. Regarding antibiotic effectiveness, the nature of the arguments mostly revolves around the “risks vs. benefits” scenario. Some say that these prophylactic antibiotics have not been proven to reduce the risk of IE. Some also say these antibiotics tend to cause anaphylaxis and increase antibiotic resistance of the causative organisms. These are valid points that have counterpoints that are equally valid; studies on animals and general observation on humans show that amoxicillin is extremely effective against streptococcal endocarditis, and fear from anaphylaxis is greatly exaggerated since it’s not widely reported. Secondly, the nature of the high risk groups is shrouded in shades of gray. It’s extremely hard to categorize these groups in a straight-forward hierarchy. The proof to that is how different the AHA and NICE latest guidelines are right now. All in all, high risk groups are currently not defined on the basis of increase risk of IE, but rather on the outcome from developing the disease. Third of all, there’s no concrete proof about certain groups of patients being at greater risk of developing IE. The overall argument here is procedure-related bacteremia vs. culminative bacteremia. There are two flawed points attached to this argument, however. One: some say that increased brushing of your teeth increases your exposure to bacteria; while in the same time some say that it’s vital to have good oral hygiene to decrease the incidence of dental-related IE. Who to believe? While the latter side of the argument makes the most sense in my opinion, evidence for both is lacking. Two: if prophylaxis is generally not effective as the AHA and NICE claim, then how come drugs are still given to the so-called “highest risk groups”? Who are we to say that dental procedures are no longer a main cause of IE in patients with cardiac defects? Sure, the likelihood of IE occurring after dental procedures could be quite slim, but in the same it that does not mean that there’s no risk whatsoever. At the end of the day, there are some benefits that have appeared because of the recent guideline revisions. Patients are more aware of the severity and seriousness of infective endocarditis. They know of the disease and its symptoms and know how to combat it via basic management approach; things like good oral hygiene and the dangerousness of tattoos and piercings are effective in decreasing the likelihood of this disease in high risk groups. Moreover, the revisions are cost-saving, enabling these organizations to find better treatment and management options for IE. Despite this somewhat positive chain of events, the controversy will continue. For now, the best option is to explain these recent guidelines to patients and let them choose their lines of treatment. Resources: 1. NICE: http://www.nice.org.uk/Guidance/CG64 2. British Dental Journal Article “Continuing Controversy”: http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v204/n12/full/sj.bdj.2008.511.html 3. President’s Page Article “Why Did the Recommendations Change?”: http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/full/52/6/495 4. Endocarditis.org: http://www.endocarditis.org/know/index.html#prevent 5. Cleveland Clinic Article “Endocarditis Prophylaxis”: http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/infectiousdisease/prophylaxis/prophylaxis.htm 6. Cleveland
Clinic Journal of Medicine PDF file: http://www.ccjm.org
August 25 One big update post: CPR Finale, Alanis Concert, Final Two Weekends of Sightseeing!See what happens when I don't blog in a long while; I have to abbreviate Cardiology Progress Report to CPR in order to shorten the title! Anyway, I had a great experience overall with this cardiology elective. I was able to attend the other hospital again at the end of the third week. The final week was more focused on the clinics. I was able to listen to some heart sounds in the congenital clinic, and still found myself confused between ejection systolic and pansystolic murmurs. Rounds were kind of boring. Sadly, the cardiac MRI wasn't active this week...I wanted more exposure on that. I was also able to do some sightseeing during this weekend and the previous one, thanks to a friend who was taking his elective in Edinburgh. He came to Glasgow in the previous weekend and I went to Edinburgh this weekend. Saw a lot of cool stuff overall. Here are the links to the pics if you're curious: Pics of Glasgow Weekend Pics of Edinburgh Weekend Additionally, I attended an Alanis Morrisette concert! Wow...I so enjoyed that more than I initially expected. I haven't heard her music in a while and I'm not really familiar with everything aside from Uninvited, Ironic, Hands Clean, and You Oughta Know. She is so awesome live, and her band members rock hard! Her new music is pretty good, too. The crowd sang along with the hits, and demanded two encores and she delivered. One of them was Ironic obviously, and she cracked me up when she altered the lyrics a bit. You know the part, "It's like meeting the man of my dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife"...she replaced wife with husband and we all cheered like crazy! As a result of this awesome experience, I bought her new album and the greatest hits CD. So I have one week left to bum around in Glasgow. I had such an amazing time this summer, thank God. It's pretty amazing how fast a month and a half flies by. I'm going to try catching up with movies and write some stuff for COE. Speaking of which, keep listening to our weekly podcast. Aside from this weekend, I tend to be there. Later days. August 13 Mid-3rd Week: Cardiology Progress ReportAs I've said in one of my previous blog posts, this week is boring so far. All we do in the morning rounds is stand there because this week's doctor wants to mind his own business. Thus, I've decided to skip on the morning rounds this week. The clinics were also boring this week. I haven't seen our supervising professor, either...everyone says that he's busy with stuff this week. Today, however, was pretty sweet, thank God. I managed to check out Cardiac MRIs, which are a lot more complicated than I thought. I really enjoyed it, though. Tomorrow's the congenital clinic, which should be as interesting as last week. Cheers, mates. August 11 Weekly Podcast Ahoy!As always, be sure to have iTunes before clicking here for our latest podcast. In my view, this is one of the best ones we had in awhile thanks to Justin's very interesting topic choice: "game exclusivity". We had a very cool discussion about that with awesome revelations. Don't ask about how my first day in my 3rd week went; very uneventful, to say the least. August 08 End of 2nd Week: Cardiology Progress ReportSo I went to this other hospital today like I've been ranting in my previous blog posts. Huge, modern, and far. One of the medical students with me told me that it actually started as a private hospital funded by Saudis. I believed him once I set my eyes on the signs in the cafeteria; there's Arabic writing written under the English. It's the first time I've seen Arabic in Glasgow. Anyway, I watched our supervising professor put his hands at work in the Catheter lab. He did a patent foramen ovale repair, diagonstic angiogram, and balloon angioplasty repair to a left anterior descending coronary artery. I've never exposed as much to a catheter lab before, so it was all practically new to me. It was very enjoyable and interesting to watch all in all. It's pretty amazing how the prof was able to insert the guidewire using continuous imaging alone. Also, I was very impressed by the harmony in the cath lab, almost as if the professor and his assistants were playing a symphony. I know that sounds corny, but once you watch each individual at work you'll know what I mean. I was particually interested in the technician's work with the imaging controls. You see, the imaging device and the table are very mobile and they're all controlled via analog sticks. Yes, just like a videogame. Makes me wonder if I could be good at this type of stuff one day. It's just very delicate to see how it's controlled to position the patient in various ways to get the right angles of the arteries and whatnot. I really want to wrap my head around all of this once I stop procrastinating and start reading. I felt a bit stupid not knowing basic anatomy and physiology of the heart once I was put in the spot with questions. In other news, I've just seen a movie called "Elegy". It's one of the best drama/romance movies I've seen in awhile. Very good performances, cinematic work, and storyline. For now, I'm going to enjoy my weekend with the cinema and some DVD movies I've bought. Not to mention that italian resteraunt I've been telling you guys about. As always, later days. August 07 Thursday, 2nd week: Cardiology Progress ReportUnfortunately, I overslept today so I didn't attend the morning rounds. However, I went to the Congenital Heart Disease clinic in the afternoon. I must say, I'm glad I did. It was very active and very interesting. Listened to a couple of murmurs. Learned a thing of two about some congenital heart diseases (didn't know what Epstein's Anomaly was until today). This week is going to go out with a bang, as tomorrow I'm going to attend the other hospital and take a look at some interventional cardiac procedures. Looking forward to it. In other news, I watched the new Mummy movie yesterday. Nice, fun movie. Not sensational, however. Critics bashed it too much, though. Also, I fell in love with this excellent Italian restaurant across the cinema. Looks like I'm going to be a regular customer there. Later days, people. |
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