ANUGERAH JUARA LAGU 27 FINAL: Keputusan AJL 27 Akhir, 2013

Keputusan Anugerah Juara Lagu 27, 2013...Here I am updating the lastest results of the most popular song competation in Malaysia.

Winner: Yuna (sang by Aizat), Terukir di bintang

1st runner: Azlan and The Typewritter, Idola

2nd runner: Hafiz, Ku Akui

Best performance: Black and RJ, Rahsia ini

Best Vocal: Hafiz, Ku Akui

So what do you think? Like it? dislike? Well..congtatulations to all winners. I think Hafiz is really good in vocal. He won it this year and last year. Let's see next year's AJL? I hope AJL 28 final will be much better than AJL 27.

Last post of 2012

I can't believe I have left my blog for several months without a single post. It shows how busy I was in the last 2 or 3 months. Achieving my first objective wasn't easy at all especially someone like me who doesn't have an image processing background dealing with clustering in medical images. That's all a little bit very unfair and of course I was struggling to achieve my first objective. But then I chose this way and this path of my life. I only have two options to stop it or to carry it on. Giving up of something that I have started is not my nature at all so keep running the option that I'm holding at the moment. The moment I'm writing this post, means I have achieved my first objective and just finished my first conference paper after 5.5 months being a PhD student. I took almost 2 weeks to write my conference paper together with the experimental results, evaluation, comparison and the most tedious part which is the reference. I thought I could finish the paper in a week. I have underestimated how difficult it is writing a technical conference paper. I remember when I did my master degree last year (2011), it took me about 5 days to write the paper (6500 words) but not the one I recently wrote. I need to give my brain a full rest before I want to do a final reading of my paper. Then I will email it to my supervisor. I would assume there might be a few corrections but that's something I have expected since I'm not sure a few sections of the paper. I hope this paper will get accepted so I could have the chance travel to Germany. After this paper, I have something else to do which an abstract for the International Conference on Prostate Cancer in Milan, Italy. But I think this doesn't need much time. In fact, I can do it within an hour or less to do the abstract. So basically there are two events that I will be looking forward next year. First is a conference in Germany and then a conference in Italy.

At the moment I think I have worked hard and achieved what I wanted pretty quick. I've asked several PhD students about how long did they take to publish a conference paper and most of them said after one year. If my paper get accepted then I would say I am on my way to finish my PhD in 2 and half years. I then should be planning to write two conference papers in the first 12 months of my PhD (this sounds very ambitious though). Anyway I could do a second conference paper if I want by taking a "safe way" which is doing a review of my research area and looking at its possibility. But then doing review doesn't sound very sophisticated or technical. For me it's just like doing a literature review which is pretty easy? (I think so). Unless you are doing a review and you have to show the different results of different methods. So basically you have to implement several methods by yourself and  compare the results. This probably sounds more technical rather than just explaining the theory parts of different methods.

Well, after that I should be getting ready mentally and physically (LOL) to apply the algorithm I developed on medical images. I don't know how well the algorithm can work. If it doesn't work at all then basically I need to redo 50% of the algorithm otherwise it should be pretty fast to achieve my second objective. If this is achievable in 3 or 4 months then this could be the second conference paper of my first year PhD. But I doubt this is the case because doing a PhD is so difficult and nothing comes easily. I probably need to create a new "engine" of the algorithm by using the existing features. I would expect I will have to do 30% modifications of the algorithm. For me doing a PhD is like merging pieces of puzzles and you don't know how and where to start. Sometimes you thought you are almost there but then in reality you have just started it. Doing a PhD is not about cleverness though. For me it's all about how strong you are mentally. I know several people who are brilliant but did not manage to finish their PhDs because they cannot take the pressures. On the other hand, I also know some students who are not clever enough but managed to finish their PhDs in 5 years because they are so agile fighting every single pressure. Being clever of course will give an advantage to the students but then depending on one factor is not enough to be a PhD student. For example, I wouldn't consider myself as a clever person but I would say I am tough when it's dealing with pressures. As far as I can remember I never gave up so far. I accepted things that happened but it doesn't mean I give up.

Anyway, Christmas is on its way and everybody is busy getting ready for one of the biggest events in the world. But I was busy writing my conference paper. I did put lots of effort to do that actually. Having said that I cannot miss my badminton sessions and I love playing badminton. I have missed my running sessions as well as my volleyball sessions but never badminton session. I know I am busy but then I always believe that no matter how busy you are if you take a break by spending an hour doing sport and get back to what you were doing you will find a fresh new idea and this helps a lot. A few days ago my niece told me through facebook that her mum which is my sister wants to sponsor my return flight ticket going to Malaysia from London. That sounds very tempting of course and I feel like I should be going back but taking a two week holiday is not enough and definitely isn't worth the money. So I decided to stay here and probably next year Christmas I might be going back. But that is still uncertain because it depends with my conference paper. One wonderful news is I managed to maintain my weight since I came here in June, 2012. I am really pleased with it. I am still 65Kg and to be quite honest I really want to be 63KG or 62KG. I need to get rid of my 3KG so I can run faster and have a better endurance level. I don't know when I can achieve that...probably end of next year. The problem is I do a lot of sports but then I eat a lot. LOL!

This is probably the last post of this year (I hope there are few more posts next week or this week). I will be having two days off on 25th and 26th but most probably will be back on the 27th to the office. I should be started applying the algorithm on medical images after Christmas and see how the initial results look like. This will give me the initial overview of how much work I would need to do to achieve my second objective. Then early January I should be ready and put as much effort as I can to achieve the second objective of my research. I can feel the pressures at the moment writing this post. But I'm sure I can do that it just the matter of how long I can do that. I just hope it's not too long. Hopefully within 4 or 5 months. I hope I can get some feedback from my supervisor regarding to my paper by early January. So any corrections can be done as soon as possible before the submission date on the 10th of January.

Okay peeps..I think I'm finished with today's post and see you again in my next post.

P/s: The weather is getting cold and I just hate it!!!!! Someone used to say this to me "People who love cold weather are boring" LOL!

First update after a month rest.

Hello guys, I am back again after almost a month I didn't update this blog. I have been very busy with so many things such as research, visits for data collection as well as get involved in several sports. My research is in the final stage to achieve the first objective but it seems like this is very hard and I must admit that I didn't do much since recently. Firstly I was a away from my office in Norwich meeting with the Radiology Department last week and since I came back to Aber I wasn't really into my best mood to do my research. In fact I'm loosing interest which is a little bit worrying actually. After a massive enjoyment in Norwich I got back to Aber with my brain half asleep. Until today I still feel a little bit lazy and not really interested to put enough effort into it. Every time I come to the office there is always something distract my concetration.

This week I did read about Principal Components Analysis which is probably very helpful to analyse high demensional data. This is exactly what I'm doing for my research. Trying to manipulate high demansional data to detect prostate cancer on MR images and also diffussion MR images. I'm still not sure how successful this research could be until I achieved my first objective. It's too early to say at the moment and I really hope I am able to achieve my first objective by the end of this year. I have been reading about Principal Components Analysis but I'm not sure how to use and and what does it mean after implemented it. I know this is a method which is able to identify data pattern and also able to identify redundent data but how this could help my research? How does this could help my clustering process? Mmmmm..I am still a little bit blur at the moment. It has been about 3 weeks I'm in the same stage from where I was. I hate being stuck and it seems like I didn't anything whereas I did several tests except this week which is very unsual for me. For some reasons I feel a little bit unmotivated I think because I'm getting involved with too many sports clubs. Not too many but three are enough because they make me do sport every day. Each of them have different sessions of training and all together make it Mondays to Sundays. But I don't really want to go on Sundays because that my only time to have a rest. I will go and do some work on Saturdays as well at the office. Quite busy at the moment but I'm enjoying doing what I do. It makes me active physically and mentally and stop me being a fat pig LOL!

Okay..okay...I have signed up for three different clubs which are running club, badminton club and also  volleyball club. I wouldn't expect to attend every session of their training but 2 hours or less than that would be more than enough for me. I mean my PhD research is still my first priority. I want to make sure that I can finish my PhD in three years time instead of four years time. Basically my scholarship is only for 3 years and it's would be very expensive for me to do another year. My main purpose to join those clubs is to make new friends but it seems like the it's not that easy to make friends in running club. Maybe because I am too old. But hey being 27 is not too bad i would think. But I understand the fact that most of the runners in the club are between 19-23. So I am probably the oldest member among them. Being a PhD student also doesn't really help. I mean when they asked what am I studying and I said I'm doing a PhD in computer science they were saying something like huh??? with their funny face. Maybe I should have told them that I am an undergraduate student but then I would be too old.

On the other hand, I am making several or maybe many friends from the badminton club. I like the fact that I can have a rileks conversation with lecturers and also some other students without considering their status or even what they at the university. I mean we are all the same as long as there is a respect the world would be a better place to live. But it's never as easy as this because people are different and the differences make the world chaos. Anyway, I'm not a winner of peace Nobel prize so I don't really want to talk about it like I have been one of the finalists for this award.

Changing the subject, I went for a run about 8.20KM today with a physic lecturer Dr.Balazs who I known from the playing badminton at the sport centre. The whether wasn't that good but not too bad because the visibility was okay and I enjoyed the run although it was probably a little bit tiring. I'm sure we could have done better but then we didin't run in a full strength although I thought I almost did. But I'm sure Balazs can do faster then me during the race. I think I would finish the race in 1 hour 5 minutes because it was actually 11.6KM instead of 10KM. So maybe finishing 1 hour 5 minutes for 11.6KM is not too bad but I am hoping to be able to finish it in less than an hour. It sounds hard actually.

Anyway, after that 8.20KM run with Balazs, I decide to go to the sport cage after getting a message from a friend that today was the selection process for the university team. I was pretty exhausted and I left my rackets in the car and I come to the cage with my jeans. I played probably twice and I lost both games. The first game i lost 15-17 ad the second game I lost 4-15. Then the university's best player said I wasn't good enough whereas I wasn't in a position to show my best performance after that afternoon run and playing with my jeans on rather than with my short? Fuckin hell..it was very unfair and also I was using the cheap racket provided by the university. It was heavy and the string wasn't good enough to return the shuttle to your opponent. The worst thing is playing with my jeans on rather than with my short. So it was very unfair. Nevermind, because I have another chance to show what I have on Friday which is the next training. After all, I would say Friday is the Jungle Boy's revenge. I'll be back with my full strength. I hate being looked down by someone if I wasn't in a position to show what I have especially after 8.20KM up and down hill that is pretty tiring.

Anway...huh!!! I;m rambling and I've just finished it. I'm going to bed now....zzzzz

p/s: This is an unedited post...

Red Culins 6 Peaks, Scotland

 I am back again blogging after 4 days disappeared from my "world". I mean from my research. It was pretty depressing last week because nothing interesting happened to my PhD progress. It was very depressing and I hated it because all my experiments did not work at all. So perhaps going to Scotland climbing a few mountains would be a good gate away for my brain. I am still doing it as much as I can so far although I think it's still quite tricky. I don't really want to talk about my PhD in this post because I'm sick of it. I will be doing the same old thing tomorrow, extracting, testing ans segmenting. Kind of a little bit boring actually but then as my supervisor said it is one of the challenges in doing research. In fact, at some points we might feel so down and disappointed because everything does not work.   I hope I won't have to go through this situation. Mmmm..pretty scary actually. Anyway the long weekend went really good and I think we were quite lucky for having that lovely sunny weather although it wasn't warm but the visibility was fantastic.

 Although the second day in Scotland was miserable as I only managed to climb one mountain because of the weather condition and that rain, cold, mist and windy condition made me so tired and just lost my energy that night. I bruised in my dream early night without knowing what had happened before I went to bed. All I know was closed my eyes and got up in the morning as fresh as a Daisy (oh was I? I never thought I could be as fresh as a Daisy LOL!). Anyway, the climb started with a very very shitty a.k.a yucky mud for about 2 KM. I didn't like it at all not because I was a soft kind of guy (excuse me???? a soft guy? Me?) but because I didn't have another pair of shoes. My shoes got really wet and muddy the day before. Anyway, we started it and we had to carry on as fast as we can although I actually wasted a lot of time taking photos along the ridges.

 According to the weather forecast, we had just about 3 hours to do as many mountains as we can before the weather changed and there might be a heavy shower. But thanks God because the weather stayed dried sunny and clear for the whole day. I really enjoyed it. After the second peak a friend of mine decided not to go any further because of his back was aching. So I had to continue it by myself without a compass  and a map. In fact all I had with me that time were two bottles of energy drinks and a bar of Kit Kat Chocolate. I had my mobile phone of course just in case if I couldn't find my way around. The hardest ascent was the fifth peak which took about 40 minutes to climb or maybe 50 minutes. It was quite hard because it was very very steep. In fact, at some points you have to be careful and watch every step to make sure you are walking on a hard surface rather than on a scree surface. Otherwise you could easily slip yourself.

After almost 5 hours climbing at last I reached the fifth peak which is the hardest peak to do. I drank my energy drink and ate my chocolate bar. I thought I had very little energy left after the 5th peak. It was about 3PM and I had nothing except a full English breakfast about 8.30PM but that was burned after the third peak. I needed food and was quite hungry that time but then decided to do the last peak and thanks God because the last peak was quite easy and I ran along the ridge and I took less than 10 minutes to reach the last peak but exhausted on top of the 6th peak. Apart from being really hungry I think I really enjoyed it. My next trip gonna be the Black Culins which is the toughest in the UK. This needs lots of preparation in the terms of logistics, mental and physical. 

Okay, changing the subject...this week is the induction week and guess what? It's gonna be pretty boring.. 

So Much Effort With Empty Result

In a few days time I will be going to Scotland together with a friend of mine who is currently building his house at there. So basically I will be accompanying him from Wales to Scotland for about 8 hours journey (more and less). Pretty long journey before I'm going to Norwich for a hospital visit meeting a radiologist for my research. To be quite honest I don't really know what exactly I want to know and I would get from the radiologist apart from their explanations about difussion MRI and conventional MRI. I don't know what questions I want to ask and what actually sort of data I could collect from them other than difussion MR images. In short, I'm not fully ready yet but it sounds very exciting visit (I hope). Anyway, today is one of those days which is quite depressing, annoying, irritating and disappointing. I feel like a fool have been doing so many things testing different combination of features but none of them were working. In fact, I thought to myself of being a little bit stupid for my lack of understanding in several parts of image processing.

Having said that, in a way I think what I have been doing was pretty good at least I know that they were not working. There are two major thing that I need to do which are features selection and also try to extract more features and test ech of them for to get the best combination among them. I probably can do these two main tasks within a day or maybe a couple of days but the main problem is to test each of them and get the best pairs (features combination). So the extracion process sounds quick and probably not very difficult but the process to test each of them is quite fussy and probably difficult. Sometimes I feel like working 8 hours in the office is not really enough. I feel like I want to bring my desktop in the office to home and then continue at home again. Most of the time I feel like I wish I could have a bed in the office so I can lay on bed whenever I want and feel tired and have a nap, wake up and then work again. This sounds a little bit workoholic actually or probably researcholic (I've just invented a new English word LOL!).

I came to the office today about 10.30Am and started my work on MatLab. It went on and on with no break at all until I realised it was almost 3PM and I thought I should have my Mocha by now. Wow..when I stopped I can feel my head was like throbbing and felt like I needed a paracetamol. Mmmmmm doesn't sound good at all but after my first Mocha the 10 minutes break refresh my brain again. I wasn't sure whether it was a break or not because I was having my Mocha and at the same time doing some pixel calculations. Although I wasn't looking at the source code but my brain was working on something else. Anway, I work until almost 7PM and I felt a little bit tired until I had my dinner. As usual I always skip my lunch if I'm in the office but always take my lunch if i'm at home. The reason is because I have very little physical movement in the office which probably mean I burn very little calories during the day. I also always make sure that I will go to the office about 5.30 or 6PM until 7PM for a quick training. But not today because I needed to complete all the ideas that I thought might be worked. But guess what??? nothing......same old same old same old...I was very disappointed and felt really upset because all the ideas did not work at all. I felt it was a waste of time but then you never know until you try....

Let's hope tommrrow gonna a better day or probably a lucky day for me...until then keep in touch and see you in my next post. I can't wait to play badminton tommrrow :-D

Too Much Badminton But I Enjoyed It

Today was another disappointing day for me and very very annoying day because my algorithm still doesn't work. The results of segmented image have improved a little bit but you still can't relaying on the results in the filed of medical. I emailed my supervisor Prof.Reyer just before I went back home. I attached the segmented result image and asked him what does he think about it. Kind of a bit bonus question actually because I knew the segmented image is a terrible result. I came to the office about 10.30AM and my supervisor was going out of his office (I think he wanted to see me). I came up and started up my laptop and my PC. A few minuted later he come to my desk with a old book "Physiology of computer vision". Oh God!!!! What a book. I must take a quick look what the book is about. Anyway, he came to my desk and was hoping I will will say something about my research but I said I need my time and there are still a few ideas that I need to implement. So I said I will get back or pop into your office when I have some better results. Phewww!!! I don't like it when someone wanted to see something interesting but I can't show. I will always blame my myself first.

I really hope to get or see some result by this week. I mean a better result. I really hope to see improvement. At least 30% or 40% improvement. This will really make me happy and get motivated again. Dealing with high dimensional vectors are not easy and very tricky stated by Harry one of the Post-doctoral researchers in my office. Although my undergraduate wasn't come from image processing (and my Master), but I will take this as a challenge. In fact, I have been talking to a friend of mine that taking a PhD which is not really into my education background is probably the biggest challenge or risk that I have taken in my life. At the moment, I am relaying my on my Math's ability and also my programming skills. These two skills helping me a lot every day. Although there are so many things especially the theories side of this field that I need to learn but I believe I can do this. At the moment my plan is still the same to finish it within 2 and a half years. Sometimes I feel I'm doing the impossible but sometimes I feel like I have done similar (so something like this before) so why can't I do this. Or maybe I have underestimated PhD? Or am I too ambitious? Or maybe I too proud of myself and forgot how difficult doing a PhD is. Well, I might be a dreamer to finish my PhD in 2 and a half year but then as the song says, everybody has a dream. So do I.

Anyway, plan is just a plan. Up to now I'm still with my plan and I'm holding it tightly. Let's hope this dream comes true. But if it doesn't then don't worry because three years is still a good timing. Despite my very busy research (physically relax but mentally busy), I still manage to keep my fitness level (Really? Mmmm..not sure..I need to test my fitness level by running 21KM then I can confirm to you guys). Yeah I recently make friends in badminton games. I really enjoy my time although I have left the sport for more than a year. In fact several years because I played just a few times last year. I need to reshape and regain my skills. I used to play badminton a lot but since I moved to my secondary school I left most of sports. I was interested in debating (I was an ex debater up to division level almost to state level), singing (I was an ex-president choir club of my school), poetry (I love poets), etc. I would say my interests were quite unusual actually because I remembered I took all science subjects such Math, Advanced Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc but  my interests are very much into arts. Strange!!! Well very very strange (not really!).

I left sports many years...probably more than 10 years till I realised in 2011 that I needed to rebuild my stamina again. I started running last year with a very small distance about 3 or maybe 2 kilometres. It was terrible and it felt like I was dying. Since that moment, I realise that I do need to keep fit again. It has been about year and 3 months now I run consistently almost every day (at least 3 times a week with a distance from 5 to 10KM per session). My best time running 10KM is about 48 minutes 35 seconds and that was last month. I would love to run on the circuit again at the university sport centre but the weather has been really bad (either running or windy). So most of the time I go to the gym and have a quick run on the machine for about 3 to 5KM and had my 120 sit ups finish with climbing 100 floors on the machine. This overall burn my calories for about 550 to 650 depending on how fast and how hard I push myself. So for what I am now, I am back in shape, back in good condition physically and back in the game again. To build up the stamina where I am at the moment it takes more than a year training! Phew!!! it was a hard work but I'm glad I did it.

Since I came to this new place (Aber Uni), I made several good friends already and I hope one evening we can go out together and have a social drink in town. I love clubbing having said that I love a nice cosy evening. The next thing to do in Aber is to make as many friends as I can and then plan for a trip to somewhere. I have already make friends from Summer School in Manchester and we are planning to have a reunion in Barcelona in Feb next year. Wow!! Fantastic plan!!! I remember when I first arrived to this place back in June 2012 (Been here for just about 3 and a half months actually) I was a bit nervous because I wasn't sure how's the people here. But then they are quite friendly especially the staffs and the most important for me is making friends from different countries, races, religions and ages.

Oh, it's almost 11.30PM. I mean I need to go to bed now. I played badminton today for about 1 hour 45 minutes. It was a bit too much (not really) because I should be getting back to my desk by 1.15PM to continue doing my research. Anyway..let's enjoy the life while we still alive....going to bed now...nite nite x