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

It's Raining Men..Hallelujah

It's weekend and it has been a few days since i discovered this song. It's called It's Raining Men by Weather Girls. I think I've heard this before but I wasn't sure where and then a few days ago when I was driving to school, this song was playing on heart FM. As soon as I heard it, I liked it not because of the lyrics but the melody. I like the fact that the song is quite catchy and clubbing types of song which I always like especially when I'm driving. I don't really listen to slow romantic songs when I'm driving as they make me sleepy LOL! Anyway, I love clubbing (unofficial confession of me) and I love partying but it has to be with the right people or the right company. Otherwise it could be pretty boring.

As soon as I arrive at the office, I switched on my machine and googled the song and I never thought the singers are two big girls and pretty funny to be quite honest. But the strong voices of them make me really like this song. Anyway it was a pretty busy weekend for me because I washed two cars, cleaned up the kitchen, hoovering, dusting, fitting the windows, cooking and several other things. But I'm glad I've done them all made my weekend a productive weekend. Now the car looks clean again. One thing I missed though is having a chocolate milk shake from MacDonald. I must have it sometimes when I got the time to pop into the restaurant (Restaurant???? I don't call restaurants serving junk food as a restaurant). Oh ya, I didn't iron my clothes because I wasn't in a mood to iron them. In fact I was a bit lazy but still managed to do several things.

I cooked something very fattening tonight. Believe it or not it was chunks of lamb cooked with tandoori curry with cheese, cream, honey, etc. The ingredients were so bloody fattening!!! Sadly I ate them with rice which made my dinner so rich full with carbohydrate and fat. I then watch x-factor which is my favourite TV show after Britions got talents. Very interesting and exciting talents some of them were really good and some were really crap but have very high self confidence made them look fool in front of thousands audiances in the hall. Some have very sad background and performed really well during the auditions made me think that a real hero! Next week gonna be the bootcamp and I'm going to miss it because I will be in Scotland otherwise the hotel or B&B room has a TV which I doubt. This means I have to watch the episodes from youtube on Monday. I will be back from Scotland on very late Sunday night.

Regarding to my PhD research, it has been 3 months 15 days for me being a PhD student and then progress works pretty okay not too bad but not very impressive at all. In fact I feel several parts of what I have done were quite depressing and sometimes I thought it can't really do it. But so far I managed to do all those difficult tasks but sometimes when I looked back I don't really know how did I do it. But anyway, I am still stuck with my clustering at the moment after several attempts. I have done so many ways try to invent a new method but none of them can produce good results. Phewwww...getting to my nerve sometimes and I hate the fact that I have to redo some of the parts for the sake of testing it (mmm...what is it?? sorry I don't understand what I'm saying here lol!). So tmrw gonna be a new day fresher brain and hopfully new ideas can help me out to figure out the problems.

This week I should start to buy rackets (I need two!!) from the internet and hopfully get them delivered before Thursday. I then need to buy the shuttlecocks and also the rackets' cover. I have found a few interesting reckets from several websites but I haven't made up my mind yet. I also think I need to buy a new pair of running shoes. I get bored using the same shoes running everyday LOL!!! Okay guys, I think I need to go to bed now and I need to get up early tmrw (I always say this and always get up late).

Good Bye Summer Hello Autumn

Summer is leaving us

Autumn is coming 

Good bye blue sky hello dark sky

Okay here is another update late night. Huh..yesterday (Tuesday) was another disaster day for me but not too bad because I did manage to normalize the two features which are Entropy and Local Binary Pattern Images. The good thing was I managed to use K-Means method to do clustering but the result wasn't very good. In fact it was very disappointing. I hated the result anyway it was far than my lowest expectation. It seems like I have to do a huge modification or I need to redo the whole process again which is very depressing because it means that I need to read other different journals to get some ideas. I really hope that I can do some modification at the last step of the algorithm.

Anyway, last weekend was the time to say good bye sunshine, hello dark sky! After my dinner I was washing the dishes in the kitchen and realised that a beautiful sunset was disappearing. It looked so beautiful and so clear with the red sky. I wish my DSLR Canon could focus closer so I can take the sunset bigger without cropping it. I quickly ran upstairs and took my camera and had a few snaps. The pictures above are some of more than 10 shots I took.

Need to get back to my research now...I have been doing this for about 3 months 12 days now!!!!

Seafood Dishes

It has been a few days or maybe almost a week since I last updated my blog. I have been very busy with my PhD research and at this stage (early stage) I think it's very demanding and very tiring. Just a quick update for what I have cooked last week. Scallops and Prawns. Very simple cooked them with some cream and coconut milk. Not too bad but was a little but disappointed because the scallops were overcooked. To be quite honest I never really cooked scallops but was keen to try it out. Unfortunately my first attempt was a failure. The taste was just above the average but I must say there were harder and drier than they should be. I should cook them in a very low temperature and watch their texture very carefully. Each Scallop should not be cooked more than five minutes. In fact I got the feeling they could be better cooked if I warp them with something such as banana leave or maybe foil. By using these wrappers, they don't get dry easily and the meat would get very moist which is the main aim when cooking Scallops. So that's what I say lesson learnt!!!
Next time I will cook these dishes again but I really need to learn about some special techniques cooking Scallops. Ok folks I need to continue my work now and I hope to get some results and at least to see a one step improvement for what I'm doing now. I am stuck at the moment and I hate this so much !!!!

Another Great Recipes But bad Monday

Chicken Chinks with three different curries

Aubergine with intense sauce made of lime, honey and chillies 

Fantastic food, great weekend but very bad Monday!!!!

Oh Gosh I have been very busy with my research lately. There are so many things I need to do and at one point I really thought I almost achieve my first objective but ironically there are so many test I need to do. I feel a little bit disappointed and feel a little bit upset. Very frustrating after so many hours and days you spent your time on something and knowing that it's not gonna work or it's only the beginning of thousands of things that you need to do. Oh Gosh I really hope that have enough enthusiasm before I get exhausted. Well it's still very early to say but I honestly think the three month being a PhD student feels like three weeks. It seems like everything was very quick and I'm not sure whether what I have done in the last 3 months are enough or not. Sometimes I feel I am a little bit ahead of my plan but sometimes I feel like I am way behind from my plan. I'm not sure and I really don't know until I achieve my first objective which I hope before the end of this year. Phew!!!! In fact, today's progress was empty. I did so many tests trying to do different method to segment my image but none of them produced the result I want. The main problem is how can I do clustering/segmentation???? I have tried several different method but it didn't really work because I didn't really know how to implement it and even if I know how to implement them but they couldn't produce the result I want.

I was very disappointed!! I thought nothing I can do but had to leave the office because it was already 6PM and I didn't really want to miss my training in the gym. I had very quick training as I needed to be at home about 7.45PM. I had only about 30 minutes training in the gym but it was enough to burn some unneeded calories in my body (LOL!). I had 3KM and climbed only 60 steps! That's enough!! And I will continue again tomorrow.

Two Different Korma Prawns Dishes

Very simple to prepare but very nice!!!

This is another very simple dish but really a delicious one, Tikka Prawns with Mango and Yogurt. I would rate this dish 4.3/5.0. But then could be up to 4.5/5.0 depends with how thick and tasty your gravy is. Another one is the prawns. Make sure your prawns are flavoursome because they are the main   and very important ingredient in this dish followed by the gravy and mango. Make sure your mango is sweet and not sour.

All right, the second dish is using Korma curry as well but cooked with with vegetable stock and honey with pineapple chucks and parsley. Don't put too much honey because the pineapple should be sweet enough and make sure that you are putting a table spoon of apple vinegar to make this dish a little bit sour. This dish meant to be sweet with a little sour. So this could be as good as 4.5/5.0 rate. But again make sure your prawns are really tasty because it would influence the whole dish. Flavoursome prawns would produce nice juice when you are cooking them with the other ingredients and makes a really nice gravy!!!

Okay guys, It's Sunday so happy weekend although I'm stuck in the office doing my research and learning something. Have a good weekend and enjoy especially my loyal readers in the UK.

Great Food and Great PhD Progress

Mushrooms with Ginger and Honey

Well, before I go to my PhD progress here is another dish I cooked suitable for vegetarians. All the ingredients are 100% vege! So if you are vegetarians than this one is a perfect choice for you. Thick gravy and very moist and tender mushrooms yummyyyyyyy....this one can be spicy and can be very mild but this this time I made it very  mild and no chilies at all.

Okay, now a little bit update of my PhD research. Well, I am really happy today because my algorithm does work and the main thing is that what my thought in the last a few days constructed into a code and it does work almost exactly what I wanted although still a little bit inaccurate but this is so great for the first time. I've learn two main methods today which was taught by my Spanish friend Raquel. She's genius and I've learnt a lot form her. It's a shame as she is leaving very soon to Scotland. But I do hope that she will be coming back to Aber Uni again next year for her PhD.

The two methods I've learnt today were KNN and also K-means. Actually they are not as difficult as I thought. In fact K-means is quite easy but KNN was a bit tricky. But once you got the concept it should be okay. Tomorrow (Sunday), she will teach me about split and merge algorithm which I really want to learn and I can wait to learn. My noise removal algorithm is working and this makes me really happy. Yippieee!!!

Officialy I'm with MatLab for a month today and guess what??? I think I'm doing really great. Oh I forgot to tell you guys, I had 5KM run, 150 sit ups and 100 steeps climbed!

One Of My Best Duck Dishes

Korma Duck with coconut milk, lime leaves and honey

It has been sometimes since my last update. I had so much fun over the weekend. I went to clubs and got drunk just to release some of my tenses. Arghh..being a PhD student is actually very demanding especially the time because you need to make sure that you are not behind of your plan. Otherwise you have to be quick at several parts or stages of your research. I mean if you are currently behind of your plan, make sure you can do the next tasks quicker to make sure you are back on your plan. After several attempts and failed to develop my algoritham I had a long weekend holiday in London just for a change. I was feed up being in the office most of the time or clicmbing mountain over the weekend. I needed a change and didn't want to think anything related to my research. Yucksss!!!! Last Friday I thought I was dying and wanted to puke everytime I think about it. One way was I left my laptop in Wales and went down to London with no laptop. I think for the first time ever I didn't bring my laptop together with me travelling. But several days off made my brain fresher and new ideas came this week. So for four days, I think I've developed an algorithm although it doesn't work as I expected/wanted but the result was much better than last week.

Anyway, I should be talking about one of my best duck dishes. Fuhhh!!! I must admit this is one of the best. Maybe not the best but I am certain in my top 5 among more than 20 duck dishes I can cook. How to make it? Mmmm...not that difficult. In fact quite easy as long as you know the ingredients. The most important thing is to roast the duck in an oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes (or 2 hours). But I prefer less than 2 hours because I don't really want the duck get dried. I like it moist and make sure the skin doesn't get crisped. Once the duck is cooked carve the breast and chop it into small portions. The most important is its gravy. A few things that you need to mix and fry them together. Here they are;  Kaffir lime leaves, korma curry, coconut milk, honey, onions, chicken stock, lemon juice and salt. These are easy to get and you can get all of them from a single shop like Morrissons, Tesco or even Asda. So just fry them all together with olive oil of course or corn oil (doesn't matter). When the gravy is boiling just put it in a plate where you put the chopped duck! That's it! simple but very delicious. I would personally rate this 4.7/5.0!! I had a duck dish somewhere in Oxford and my personal rate was 4.8/5.0. So I'm still learning and finding the best ingredients to get the best taste for duck!

Just A Love Letter

Well, it has been sometimes since I made something through my emotions. Today is really bad. Probably one of my worst days ever! It started since yesterday when everything didn't go what I wanted. And my thought got so chaos with everything. Memories came to my head disturbed my concentration and went into my emotions made me feel a little bit upset and emotionally unstable. But I managed to controlled myself until today's afternoon when once again my plan didn't work and emotions were playing up and I just couldn't concentrate what I was doing in the office.

I went out of the office very early today about 3PM or a bit early which I never done it before but then I can't take it anymore. I needed a rest and when I got back at home (I had my hair cut on the way back home) I had my bath and shower (yes both). Listening to several sad songs (i don't know why they were sad songs but it felt nice soaking my body in the tab). Anyway...I had my dinner and after dinner I wrote something from my heart and how I feel about love.

Take my hand,
Hold it tight and touch my face,
Down my chest,
Can you feel my heart?
It's beating faster than you ever know.
Can you see that you are always there?
Always at the centre of my heart.

Do you know what does it means?
It's not just a love
But,
It's a love with tears, blood and flesh,
Love with tears means emotions,
Love with blood means sacrifice,
Love with flesh means togetherness,
Because love with tears, blood and flesh means unbreakable,
When love is unbreakable it stays forever,
When love stays forever it means it never dies,

That's why love never lies
That's why you can't deny love
Because once you denied it
It hurts you.
To mend a broken heart is tough and painful,
So when it comes to love,
Don't forget
Love needs tears, sacrifice and togetherness
But it has either happiness or painfulness

Originally written by: Jungle Boy
23/08/2012
8.15PM in  a conservatory of Aberaron Village
Wales, UK

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday.......
Yeah...yesterday was a history and today is a plan as tomorrow is the future. I've heard this so many times and this is absolutely true. Anyway, yesterday was a lot of stress with much heavier work carried by my little tiny brain. Sometimes I said to myself that those are too much and I would never be able to handle or even to solve it. I came to the office almost 11AM. My brain was struggling thinking about what shall I do today. Arghhh...what a day. I wasn't in a mood at all to do what I suppose to do. Lots of journals on my desk and some of them I've read 3 or 4 times. Pretty boring and I tried not to look any of the journals as it makes me feel like I should do this method of the other method. I've tried several method and none of them has the potential to achieve for what I want. An hour later I started drinking my coffee in the flask I filled in about couple of hour ago. As usual coffee is a good booster especially brain. I then slowly persuading myself to open MatLab. With a my laziness I slowly pushing my brain to think about something else. Something new with a better prospect to do what I want to do. Although it's still very early to say but then based on its logic plan, it seems like this has a very good potential to do a segmentation. Although some of my friends thought it's something very weird idea but I was so firmed to myself that this technique would work. After several hours mingling on MatLab I completed 70% of the algorithm (or maybe 80%).  With that piece I did a few pretests and it shows very good potential to do what I want to do. Although the result is still very uncertain but then this should be a good start for me to achieve my first objective.

Today.........
I didn't need a coffee to start the engine of my brain. I came to the office quite early and feel very excited to start MatLab. In fact, I couldn't sleep well last night because my brain didn't stop thinking about this algorithm. Now I am doing it and I hope to see some potential results by today...

Frustrated With the Weather

How I miss to have a holiday here again

Well, it's almost 3 months since I came to Wales in June 2012 and been living to the UK almost 3 years now but on and off otherwise I would die. The main problem here in the UK is the weather. People are talking about the weather and again, again and again. When the sun came out many people will go out and enjoying the sun but when the thick dark cloud came everybody will be miserable. Well, not quite true because some people like it cool as they say it feels fresher and nice. But not for me because the cool weather here is actually doesn't feel very nice because the wind is always blowing and this makes the cool weather feels cold.

I really enjoy the hot weather

Well, maybe for someone who likes to trap himself/herself indoor and doesn't keen to enjoy the outdoor activities like camping, picnic, hiking, this kind of weather is good for them but someone like me who likes to explore places this is far too cold for me. Anyway, I'm complaining the weather at the moment and feel a little bit frustrated with it. Although I have been here for three years already but I still feel I need warm weather rather than thick kind of climate.

Nice weather that's what I'm looking for

 For 3 months summer we only had a few days hot weather. I mean that's not enough at all. When the summer comes it should be at least 80% should be hot (or at least warm) days and it's okay for the other 20%. But it's true what my friend said last time. He said something about the weather in Wales is always wet and dull. I thought I already used to it but then this year's summer gives me the real challenge of being a British. At the moment there are only two factors make me staying here in the UK. The first one is the money and followed by their best education. If not because of those factors I would never wanted to live in this country.

I can even sleep under this very nice weather

The old say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the land" (something like this i think!). A perfect place is heaven and as long as we are living in the world, there are always complains. I know sometimes Malaysia gets very hot but then that doesn't not stay long. In a few days it will change not like the weather here in the UK. The miserable days will last up to a week and sometimes months. Anyway..I shouldn't be complaining too much because I am here and I must be grateful for what I have because my life is much better compared to millions of people who never had the chance like I have now.

A Stressful Day For Me

I'm talking about my PhD research again. It has been very stressful for me last week and this week. I have read so many journals investigating several method with a great hope that this any of them would help me to achieve one of my objective. I find it so stressful. Basically I have done 25% of my first objective and I am stuck at the moment. I have successfully extracted more than 10 features from an image using three different methods which are Lindeberg Edge detector, GLCM and Local Binary Pattern. So each pixel has about 10 feature vectors. Now I want to combine them (fusing them) but I don't know how to do this. I have spoken with several postdoc researchers in the group and they suggested me a few methods but after many hours investigating those methods it ended up with null result. Very disappointing day for me actually. I really hope sometimes this week I could get some idea on how I can fuse those features for classification without using a database as a ground truth comparison (it sounds very strange) .

Anyway, as soon as I finished in the office. I went to the gym and had change. A few minutes later I went out of the gym and had a 10KM run on the circuit in 49 minutes. Also a little bit disappointing because I really thought I would time myself a little bit faster. In fact, after the 7th KM I really thought I was doing quite well and had the change to make a new personal best record for 10KM. As soon as my watch beep which means I completed the 10th KM I quickly press the stop button of my watch and looked at it. My watch shows 49:00 with 10.01KM distance. Arghhhh!!!!! What the heck!!! I was about 18 seconds slower than my personal best. Very disappointed because after a weekend rest and great food I thought I could run faster. Mmmmm.... never mind!!!!

Tomorrow I must go to the office a little bit early not like today I came about 10.50AM and finished at 5.30PM and had my run just before 7PM. I am now a little bit tired and I need some rest before more difficult work need to be done tomorrow.

Friday's Dinner With Delicate Taste

Pineapple chunks and Chinese mushrooms cooked with vegetable stock

 There was a friend visiting last Friday and I was more than happy to welcome her with my delicious and very delicate Malaysian Cuisines. So I went to the office in the morning while she was having her walk at Haford Forest (the best forest I have ever been so far). She had about 4 hours hiking and it was a pretty long walk. But I believed with the amazing scenery of the forest she enjoyed it and every drop of her sweat worth for it ha ha ha..

Duck and Chinese mushrooms cooked with honey and black pepper

 When I was in the office with my throbbing head squeezing my brain I actually had a few minutes looked on the Internet to get some ideas what to cook. Huh! I can't find any and what I did was imagining something or some sort of very soft flavour and something sweet and sour to go with it. At last, a yogurt popped out of my heavy tired brain and of course mango has the flavor of sourness and sweetness. Exactly what I wanted. For the duck I have already planned to cook it with honey and black pepper.

Prawns and mango tikka curry and yogurt 

So as soon as I finished at the office I didn't even go to the gym because I knew I was late already. I needed to do some shopping at Morrisons and also needed to go to the filling station. When I come to Morrisions there were so many people shopping which surprised me. Why on Friday? But I would guess they were buying food for their weekend camping or picnics. I was there at least about 30 - 40 minutes and quickly drive to the filling station. Huh!! I was late, as soon as I arrived I had a quick chat with her and went to the kitchen cooking the food. I took at least about 1 hour 30 minutes to do everything. Since they were new recipes and I never cooked them before, I had to be careful in many aspects especially the flavor and the thickness of the sauces. In fact, I had to cook twice for the honey and black pepper because it wasn't enough to moist the duck. The prawns tikka curry and yogurt dish was great but the sauce was a little bit watery and I should have make it thicker. But in many aspects they were very nice indeed and she enjoyed the food. Overall rating I would give 8.5/10 ha ha ha ha if those two factors were perfect it would be 9/10. After this attempt cooking curry and mango I am now looking for a something different with very exotic flavour. Maybe cooking with papaya or maybe apples. Those fruits are rich with vitamins and should be good for health.

Weekend Photography

Bob is catching fish but how can I rotate this photo?

Bob is catching some prawns and fish. He said he did catch some and when I looked into his yellow bucket they were all baby prawns except there was one prawn which looked reasonable huge (not really but better than the other prawns). I really thought he would bring them back and cook some but then he released them back to the sea. Lucky prawns and fish. If it was mum..no chance..definitely supper!!!

Anne is enjoying sitting on the rock covered by moss

Anne looked happy and amazed with the beauty and amazing different shapes and colours of the rocks. I personally think it was okay and nothing special. I mean I have been to many places which are much better than this one but than it wasn't too bad because this place is just for a quick walk.

Very rocky covered by moss

After a little bit dissapointing week knowing KNN method does not work to achieve my first objective I went out to a a little village at where I live with two friends Bob and Anne. I went there for a photography purpose whereas Bob wanted to catch some fish and prawns and Anne wanted to have a walk. When Bob said he wanted to do some fishing I had a little laugh in my heart. By looking at the rough sea, it doesn't look like it's a good place to catch some fish or even prawns. I never been to this part of where I live although I
ran many times along on the cliff. So when I was there here are some photos I've taken. The weather turned to a glorious sunny day after a very dull raining miserable morning. Thanks God! You were so kind to me :-)

Anyway, my weekend was pretty relaxing because I did nothing much but just eating. In fact, I actually missed the some usual work which are cleaning the house, cleaning the car, some ironing, etc. I wish I have done them today because I think I'm pretty busy this coming week. I need to catch up so many things and need to make sure that I am back on track to achieve my first objective. Well I am on track but I mean I am a little bit behind from my plan. So I have to work harder now. On Tuesday my friends will be having a reunion in London but I don't think I can do it. So I would miss it and sadly I will be working in the office. Huh! very tempting to go to London but I can't do anything about it.

I still hope to meet my bruv in Dunstable this month before I get really busy when the term begins in September. Since I got the full grant/scholarship from the university I have to do some teaching to undergraduate students which I really looking forward. Till now, I will post about my new recipes in my next post. Take care all...and see you in my next post.

Climbing Tryfan North Wales, UK

Standing on top of one of the ridges

Being a PhD student, a fell runner who always want to keep myself fit, a part time lecturer (will start in OCT 2012), houseboy (LOL!) and a traveller is not easy. I have so many interests in life that I want to do but I don't have enough time. So when I feel like I'm happy with my research I will have a jump and have a quick travel. It doesn't matter where it is, I will do it!

On top of Tryfan mountain with lots of flies

Dangerous climb

Testing my freehand rock climber skills

Beautiful view of the mountain

Walking on the ridge

Well, sometimes after climbing this mountain it makes me think that life is like walking on a sharp ridge and we can easily fall to the right side of the ridge or the other side. But one if you sit on the ridge it will definitely makes you safe.

Lots of rocks

Relaxing on the ridge

It was Friday last week when the weather was really good and I was very busy with my research on KNN classifier. Basically I spent lots of time like 5 days just to investigate this method to be applied on my research. So sad after today's discussion, this method doesn't work for my first objective. I feel a little bit stupid now because for how many journals I've read, I should have known whether this method is adaptable for my first objective or not. Anyway, let's don't talk about it. It makes me feel sick and honestly I am so hurt because I felt like I have wasted 5 days of my time.

Okay let's get back to my hiking experience at Tryfan mountain which I did last week. It was a glorious day and I thought it was a nice day for a walk. So we left the house at 8 in the morning (if i not mistaken). It took about 2 hours or a bit more to reach the place. As soon as we arrived, there were many people who have started climbing and there were so many rock climbers doing their own things enjoying the challenge as well as the warm weather. My first impression of the mountain was quite good but then as we walked along its path at the lower part of the mountain it was quite boring actually. For me it was just like walking on a normal mountain and there wasn't any special things or something interesting with the view. In fact, it was just green grass with very limited view. Pretty boring actually because nothing much you can see. But then after an hour walking the view was getting better and we took a different route, not the one where most people were walking that time. When we reached at the upper/higher part of the mountain the sceneries was getting really good with different views. In fact, the different rock formations make the mountain so unique and very different compared to many mountains I've climbed. The last part of climbing was a little bit dangerous and I was a bit worried if the rocks were a bit loose and you could easily fall from the ridge.

After about two and half hours of climbing/hiking we reached the top with a glorious sun and very good visibility and almost no wind blowing. This makes the temperature felt so warm and even when we were having our lunch it was so nice and didn't feel cool at all. I really liked it. On the way down we chose a the longer path which is the path we suppose to take on the way up. This path was much longer but easier compared to the one we took was shorter but very difficult and technical. I realised that there were two more mountains near by Tryfan and would be my next plan to climb them. Would be really nice if we can do all of the three mountains in a day. Gonna be a long walk though but i know i will enjoy every second of it.

On the way back I managed to take a photo of this Ugly House. It's a small house kind of bed and breakfast i think. But one thing though, this house does look ugly. It's a pity i couldn't take a photo of the house. Otherwise you will see how ugly the house is.

Olympics Closing Ceremony with these Fantastic Food

Chicken with chillies powder and honey 

Fried duck rice with crunchy beans

Chicken Rolls with cheese

Huh...it has been a long week for me and lots of things happened. So far my PhD progress goes okay and I managed to get some ideas about how i'm going to achieve my first objective. In fact, I I'm getting familiar with MatLab and this makes me feel a bit better. I am still learning and not quite sure about a few things but then I'm sure I will get into it. At the moment I'm watching the Olympics closing ceremony with a beer which is very relaxing. Loving it so far and waiting for the moment where the Spice Girls singers are performing. I did a few things today. I mean nothing new just a usual things such as cleaning the car, hoovering, washing, cooking, etc. I enjoyed watching the Men Marathon this morning as well. It was really great event and I was amazed with the speed of the runners maintaining paces from 3:00/KM to 4:00/KM  for 42KM. It was bloody difficult to do that.

Anyway, after a long week I came out new recipes of chicken cooked with chillies powder and honey and also chicken rolls with cheese. I never cooked something like these before but they turned out so well. Something not quite right though. I think the chicken rolls were not moist enough but it was okay for a first attempt. After a tiring (not really) day with lots of house work done I did enjoy the food I cooked. So next week maybe if I'm not busy I will try to make different recipes. Huh!!!  All of them are either originals, modified or some of the food I've cooked are a typical food of Malaysian (But I usually will modify the ingredients)

For some reasons (don't ask me what are they), I don't feel so happy tonight. I'm having one of those nights where my feeling is touched and something is bothering my mind at the moment. So I need to drink more of my favourite beer which is Budweiser!!!! Tomorrow I want to get up early so I can go to the office early and start my work.  If the weather is good I wouldn't mind to have a 10KM run after the office hour.

Another Personal Best 10KM

Fantastic Seafood dinner

YES!!! I am so happy today because I made another personal best of 10KM in 48 minutes 42 seconds. After yesterday's run 49minutes 46seconds finished with little fatigue I knew I could have done better. So After the office I quickly went the gym and started my starching on the track for about 15 minutes. The weather was really nice and warm. I really liked it as it wasn't feel cool but just great for me to have my 10KM run. My work in the office went smoothly and one of the Postgraduate Researcher Dr.Harry taught me a few things in the coding implementation on MatLab. He was very helpful actually and thanks to him.

Anyway, I don't really want to talk about PhD research in this post but more about my new personal best. I started my first KM with the pace of 4:57/KM. When I completed the first KM I thought I was slower than my previous run. Then I increased my pace in the second KM and finished it with 4:46/KM and it was a few seconds faster than my previous personal best. The third KM I just managed to do it under 5 minutes which was 4:59/KM. Still a few seconds faster!!! The  fourth KM I was just a second faster than the previous KM. I was trying to increase my pace in the 5th KM but 5 seconds slower than my target to run under 5:00/KM. It was 5:05/KM (Slower than the previous personal best). I looked at my watch and oh hell I was really upset and said to myself I must run much faster in the 6th KM. I thought I was running faster at the 6th KM but then when I finished it my watch showed 5:00/KM. I was really upset again and at this point I didn't think I could make a new personal best. When I was running faster at the 7th KM my mind was doing a simple calculation what would be my finishing time. A few seconds later it seemed like I could have the chance to make a new personal best only if I ran under 5:00/KM for the last 4KM.

Okay I then increased my pace and and I can feel my heart race was increasing. I finished the 7th KM 4:52/KM. I thought it was still a bit slower and then I increased my pace again at the 8th KM. At this point I wasn't sure whether I should have done it or not as I have 3KM to go. When I finished the 8th KM I looked at my watch and it showed 4:48/KM. I said to myself it was better but then I wasn't sure whether I have the energy for the last KM or not. I thought that time I have to give all I have now. I then increased my pace again and finished it with 4:43/KM. Last KM, I ran as much as I can and I can feel that time my legs were really like jelly but pushed myself very hard. In fact my breath was getting very heavy that time. I finished the last KM with a really great pace of 4:28/KM. I never thought I could do that in that after running 9KM. When I looked at my watch I just smiled and really happy with 48 minutes 42 seconds. I just got the feeling I could have done 47 minutes 50 seconds if I ran a bit faster at the first 3KM and slow a bit from the 4th KM then maintain my pace until the 7th KM then increase my pace again at the last 3KM. Strategy is very important when running but of course your stamina comes first.

Okay folks I'm going to bed now and not going to the office tmrw. Another mountain on Friday!!!!! Will upload pictures on the mountain!

My 10KM New Personal Best

After a really busy day planning three different algorithms without knowing the prospect of their outcomes I had my 10KM run again at the end of my day. It was about 5.30PM I quickly shut my laptop down and then went to the gym. Well, I went to the gym just to get changed. I should have done my sit ups but after the 10KM it was almost 7PM and by the time I get changed again and walk back to my car I will be a bit late going back home. So I quickly went back into the changing room and picked my beg and drove back. As soon as I arrived I had my shower.

Anyway, more accurately 10.03KM in 49 minutes 46 seconds. Previously my personal best for 10KM was 52 minutes and that was back in Malaysia. I then changed my training I did train a lot on the steps as well as running on a treadmill with 15% gradient (maximum on that machine). I didn't know those training actually improved a lot my pace. Although on Monday my left calf felt a bit in pain after 3KM running and had to stay until the 10th KM but this evening was really good. Everything went so smooth and didn't feel any pain at all. It was all the kilometres I felt so consistent and controlled my breath. In fact at the kilometer 8th, 9th and 10th I still can speed up my pace from 5:05/KM to 5.01/KM, 4:56/KM and 4:35KM respectively.

By looking at my Garmin Analysis here is the report of my run. There are five Kilometres when my pace was under 5 minutes per KM. There were 5:07 (6th KM), 5:05 (3rd KM), 5:05 (7th KM), 5:02 (5th KM) and 5:01 (8th KM). My next target is to run 10KM under 49 Minutes. Which means I have to cut off about 40 seconds. To do that I have to run under 5 minutes every kilometre! I probably need to do 2 weeks training running on 15% gradient and also training on steps. So we will see whether I can do this or not.

Going to bed now folks...need to concentrate on my algorithm development tomorrow.

Relaxing Weekend but Busy Week

Before I ironed my clothes

After Ironed. Gosh they were a lot actually and not sure if I enjoyed it

Huh...after a relaxing weekend this week is so bloody busy. Well it wasn't really a relaxing weekend but I spent most of my time watching Olympics. I actually did quite a few things such as general house cleaning, cleaning my car, ironing my clothes, etc. Anyway, I don't hate ironing but I don't like either. So basically ironing two or three clothes are okay but not 15 or 20 clothes. For the first time since I came back to the UK in 2012, I ironed all my clothes which was quite tiring as it took about 2 hours to do it all (or maybe more because I was like stopped and continued again). Huh..but I'm glad I did it all because this coming weekend I don't have to iron many of them. Maybe just about three or four of them. So that was okay.

This week going to be quite busy for me. Firstly I had 10KM run on the track at the University Sport Centre yesterday. The weather was really nice so I decided to run outside of the gym. In fact, only a few people were running on the track so it was nice running on it when it's not crowded. I completed the run in 53 minutes 30 seconds. It wasn't very fast and I could have done better anyway but I decided not to chase my personal best because I wanted to enjoy the run while I was running. After that race I went to the gym and I had my 110 sit ups. Was pretty easy actually and my body already get used to it. I was thinking to add more up to 150 sit ups but then I didn't want to take the risk of having sick abdomen as I've experienced it before and it was so painful. So I better just stick with it at the moment.

Anyway, today was a little bit different. I had my meeting with my supervisor just before 11AM and then it was probably the longest meeting ever with him. I think we were talking about my algorithms for about 40 or 50 minutes. He usually stayed just about 30 minutes but an extra 10 to 20 minutes today. I proposed three different algorithms and two of them were a little bit dodge ha ha ha..I mean some of the parts are quite complicated and take time to develop without knowing the prospect or the results/outcome. So I don't really want to take the risk spending months to develop a single algorithm with very uncertain outcome. At last after discussing a few things and a few modifications he thought the second algorithm has a better prospect not only in the term of accuracy but also in the term efficiency. So I picked up the second algorithm. Now I know exactly which one to choose but there are still a few problems. One of them is I don't know how to combine features extracted from three different methods and then using those features for the segmentation process. Well this is the main problem. I asked him and his answer was "This is the main challenge in your first objective". I asked Raquel the Spanish girl and she has no idea. Well.. Tomorrow I'm going to ask more people I guess.

But before I want to think about it I better do the feature extraction process using GLCM first and then the second one of to get edge information using Lindeberg method. I never heard this method before but by looking at the results this looks promising. So a huge thanks to Reyer my supervisor for suggesting me this method. He also suggested me to do a noise removal all the pictures produced  using three different methods which are Local Binary Pattern, Co-Co-occurrence Matrix and Lindeberg. The images produced via those methods have to go through a noise removal process to make sure that any unwanted noises would affect the accuracy of the segmentation process. Well, but the problem here is how do you define a noise? What noise means? And how do you know what are we removing are noises and not an important feature of the image? Because some of the images may contain important features or regions which are separated form the main regions. You see what I mean??? It's like a never ending story. It goes on and on like a bloody river. At one point you think it's gonna end but then there are lots more to be done.

Okay guys, I'm off now and I had only 5.3KM run in the gym today. The weather was terrible and yuckss. I ended up 5.3KM in the gym running with my laziness. I wasn't in a mood doing anything energetic today. But I pushed myself for a short run 5.3KM in about 30 minutes. It was pretty slow actually because I can finish 5KM in 23 minutes and that's my personal best. I wish I can do under 20 minutes in 5KM. Wow!! I'm working on it anyway. Huh..I don't really want to finish my PhD when a big belly like most of the students in the department ha ha ha...I mean I want to stay slim and keep myself active and in shape. Mental health is very important but then physical health should come together. In fact, it has been proven that doing physical exercise releases tenses. No..no...no...don't ask me how does it work. But it does work. If it's not then I would not bother to pop in the gym and have my  physical exercise.

Okay..okay..I'm going and will be back later...zzzzzzzzz
P/s: Oh team GB is doing very very well this Olympic actually..so Well Done!