tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75100458891775792602024-03-12T23:26:00.656+00:00Dr.Jungle Boy with his big dreamsAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.comBlogger1292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-91968432490619277012015-02-14T00:25:00.002+00:002015-02-14T00:25:48.860+00:00Valentine's Day: It's Over Just Before It CameHey it's Valentine's day...to those who have the plan to celebrate it then go on. For those who don't have the plan then or maybe just not in a position to celebrate it..perhaps best to say we are in the same boat? Somebody used to say this to me before "It's over just before it came "...Adele is indeed correct in this when she said sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead!Therefore here I am writing...<br />
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Everything I know about love and pain<br />
I learn from you..<br />
I thought you were my only one as you used to say<br />
I thought you were my last as we have promised<br />
You've showed me lurve as well as lust<br />
You've showed me happiness as well as sadness<br />
You gave me hope as well as rope<br />
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I wish I've built a lego house<br />
So if there was a mistake I can just destroy and rebuild it <br />
But it wasn't cuz I've build a concrete house...<br />
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Thank you for the permanent scars<br />
They are all open and bleeding<br />
If it wasn't because of you<br />
I wouldn't have had the plan to take away my life<br />
But you've made me to plan for it<br />
..and I have planned for it <br />
..I've come too far in it<br />
..I've tried to carry on walking<br />
..But it's getting too heavy<br />
..I'm just too tired to walk through it<br />
..When the right time comes it's time to go<br />
..It's all set up, all ready just waiting for the time<br />
Thank you for breaking my heart into pieces<br />
Thank you making it bleeding<br />
Thank you for making me cry<br />
But the most important is <br />
Thank you for the memory that hurt me the most<br />
....and will be forever remembered ..... <br />
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Truly..<br />
Jungle Boy,<br />
..........still not sure why does it have to be me, but somebody has to be in it and it seems to be meAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-5395225175766884032015-02-12T20:43:00.002+00:002015-02-12T20:45:06.377+00:00Valentine's Day: Time to delete all of those memoriesWell, here I am again...writing another post about what most people have experienced. It's almost Valentine's day. Well done for those who are partnered and huge congratulations to those are are married (I mean happily married LOL!). I am in the vgvLab at the moment monitoring my experiment while it's running. Spotted an error just now and quickly fixed it. I knew there must be some but I didn't expect that part.<br />
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Well...while monitoring the progress of this bloody experiment after about an hour it kind of boring (i mean really) because all I can is numbers and code phewww...so I thought let me see some photos taken on my mobile in the last three or even four months. Well, you know what..those photos..so many of them. It's like every single folder there are a few photos which I really hate. Breaks my heart..almost dropped tears but hey...I need to be strong. I mean really strong....it's not the end of my life..I have lots of things to think about other than my memories.<br />
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I cried not because of the split up because the lies. Just too much lies. The more I think about it..the more I try to remember every single word and promise..the more I hurt and the more i realise, they were all bullshits. All of those things just make me sick! So I decided to delete all of those pictures...I don't care....you've lied just so much just too many times..it's time to move on in my point of view...this time Paloma was spot on when she said 'only love can hurt like this'...but life is too short and remember we only live here once. So make the most of it :-)Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-32544908603076330002015-02-10T23:31:00.001+00:002015-02-10T23:32:33.609+00:00I was carelessHello all..hope you guys are doing well. Pheww..life had been really complicated in the last four or probably three months here. There were so many things happened to me which involved mix of emotions from black and blue. First of all, after what had happened recently, I don't think I can finish my phd by June though I'm still hoping I can submit my thesis to my external examiner by June. I might finish in September 2015 which is about 3 months later than my plan. Well, it's really is hard to say but let's see anyway.<br />
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Back to the original purpose of this post....when I had the first cut years ago it was really really hurt. James Blunt was spot on in his song when he said the first cut is the deepest. Indeed! But I've learned something which I hope could be used in my future life. Then since that I have been really careful and thought I did pretty well until last year back in September/Oct.<br />
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The book started with such a nice chapter with loads of promising happiness. Who doesn't want a happiness in life? Everyone does! Yeah...I jumped into it without thinking twice. I thought it would be my ultimate happiness and I was ready to invest everything in physically, mentally and emotionally. I have to say my brain was wise enough (not that i'm a genius LOL!) warned me and of course he did warn me several times. But you know what? I was so damn idiot for not believing my brain. Well, in all fairness, I did believe him but because I have fallen too deep trying to soar up seemed a bit too late that time. I pretended and played the clown to hide all the doubts but all of them came out eventually.<br />
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Yeah, I was broken and dumped by someone who I thought I could spend the rest of my life. It was so hard and painful. That time I insisted James Blunt was wrong in his song. No...the first cut wasn't the deepest in my case. I blamed myself for being careless. I should have learned about it I should have known all the doubts and clues. I thought I have..my brain did shout it to me. But I was careless or maybe just stub born. I don't know....I'm still a bit blur but I know and always believe time is the best healer and the best medicine. But one thing for sure is I will always remember it. I will always keep it in mind for what I have been through. I will always remember all the pains caused. Yes i was happy...yeah...they were all just illusions. You were strong that time and i wasn't. You knew what you wanted in life and you led me according to your plan. Then you realised it wasn't that easy to bend me to fit your plan (at least I won one section in your game).<br />
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Now...I have nothing to say..I shut of mouth closed..you made deep scars and you opened them. They are all bleeding. You can go ahead..and tell your past what you have done. Yeah tell them my unconditional love is something impossible for you. Tell them you have tried (although you didn't) but it didn't work. Tell them all the lies you used to tell me. You gave me something which i will remember for the rest of my life. I was happy but now my heart is broken....I probably will remember this for so many many years if not the rest of my life because I was so badly hurt you (not even sure why I'm still alive...maybe it happened for something better? Who knows!)Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-71516198583597276972015-01-20T21:35:00.001+00:002015-01-20T21:35:48.745+00:00The Coldplay Part in LurveFirst of all happy new year 2015. Yeah I know it's too late to wish. From my last post back in Oct 2014, I have been to Italy and Portugal (both for biomedical conference). In fact I've just got back! Have planned to stay in Portugal a but longer but I thought 10 days is quite a good time. Of course I thoroughly enjoyed both places but I think Italy is a better option for a holiday but Portugal is actually not far off in terms of food, cultures and architectures.I will talk about it later..probably in another post when I feel I want to talk about it. <br />
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.......LURVE is something most people have experienced. The science of Love always fail to define the coldplay part of love. Sorry doesn't mean anything in that coldplay box of love. Your tears never mean anything to some people. Separation is something like easy come easy go! Falling in love with someone could be as easy as cheese and cake...but when it comes to leaving or getting apart, the pains never come apart but always as one.<br />
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.......LURVE is something not many people realise how painful it could be until it hits you to the very end of your heart. You met people and the next day or maybe next minute of your life you never know what would happen to them. You invested emotional feeling on someone who you think you could love for the rest of your life...after a few moths you realised that it would never work. You try and try to make it work. You invested so much effort on it hoping it will work but then by the end of the day you realise it was only you working on it.<br />
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Because LURVE is like dancing a tango...and the reality is to tango it needs two people. If one doesn't work it would never work. Every night you cry and sometimes say a prayer, so someone up there would open a small hole or perhaps gives some lights. Sometimes you don't know what's the best until you've lost it. You might feel regret but some people want to move on in life. Once it's over it's a memory. But I know some people who love to live in their memories..which is fine..<br />
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LURVE is something that could be quite demanding in many aspects. Some people want an unconditional love but some people never really cares about it as long as they feel love.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-91065687021758522732014-10-28T14:14:00.000+00:002014-10-28T14:14:03.038+00:00Because only love can hurt like thisHi ya... having an afternoon break at the moment...working from Belfast and trying to do so much school work as I can. I think I've done my conference slides presentation for Italy and then today been doing my camera ready paper for Portugal (camera ready means a final version of your conference paper before it gets published)...I think I've done most of it but there are a few bits and pieces which I need to finalise and perhaps think carefully how I'm going to present it in my paper. I think some of the comments from the reviews are a bit confusing (sounds like they missed some of my points)...Anyway.....let do the actual content of this post.<br />
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True...love hurts you differently...love does not left scars physically but emotionally. Believe it or not...love is probably the most painful thing I have ever felt in my life. When you thought you got the person that you love the most and finding out that you are losing the person...you started to think "here we go..same old story"....some people say the first cut is the deepest but some people say the last one is the killer....well i kind of agree for both of them...I certainly have experienced the first one and I think I might just on the edge of the second one.<br />
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When you are already in love with someone..no matter how hard or how difficult the obstacles are you will be always in love. At least that's what I feel at the moment anyway. I know and I understand..trust needs to be showed. I couldn't agree more....lots of people can say the three magic words but not all of them can do it in reality. You know what I mean the three magic words right?<br />
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Sometimes making someone to trust you is very difficult. This is typical world..people judge other people so quickly without knowing the reality. Things happened for reasons....this is world...people judge you based on texts, letters, mails or anything without knowing or thinking "why did he/she do it". If you judge people based on texts....may I know if you judge genuinity based on texts as well? yeah..that's the problem right? Nowadays, people like to show how much they know about someone based on what they read or see instead of what they have experienced. Remember..seeing something is much easier than experiencing something. If you have experience it then you know how good or difficult it is and then you started to realise about finding other alternative.<br />
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Yes I did write about money is important than romance...oh yeah....but before you judge me based on this have you ever experience what I have been through in my life? Have you ever know anything about myself? If I ask you what life means..do you really know what life is in practical? Or would you define life based on what you've read from books. I might be younger than you (yes you...i know you are reading my blog)..but age never defines how much experience do you have in life. Anyway...I'm not that kind of guy who likes to argue about something. I always walk away from arguments...because I know arguments never solve problems.<br />
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Remember...every person is unique and never ever judge a person based on his opinion unless you really know him/her inside out. People say something based on what they have experienced in life...like you...you have different view about something which are completely different than the other people. But your opinion doesn't represent the rest of yourself...or does it? It just means that you have experience something different than the rest of the other people. Oh well...enough for now....I better continue my camera ready paper :-) Ta'da :-)Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-64549012316496001852014-10-12T21:37:00.000+01:002014-10-12T21:37:07.177+01:00I'm the one by your sideMy legs are a bit tired tonight but still want to update my blog just to make it alive again. I started this blog about five or six years ago and ever since I always try to make sure this blog is stay alive.<br />
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You know when you are in a relationship right? It feels so good and everyday you feel like you always have something that you'll be looking forward. Everyday the person's name is on your head and you remember all the things that you used to do together, you feel like the person is just perfect for you and you just don't want to lose that person.<br />
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But in some cases, some people have been in relationships before the person met you. Sometimes in your conversion, the person talks about his/her past. Some of them had really good ones. I mean really good relationships. But for some reasons "it is better to leave than to hold on". There are so many reasons this happened...and one of them is death.<br />
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Okay okay some of you did not understand what I'm trying to say. Let's put it straight to the point. Dating with someone who had an amazing relationship but his/her gf/bf passed away just before they got married.<br />
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So basically, every time you are having a date with the person you always feel like you are being compared (even if the person never compared). Don't you feel that way? I do...most of the time. Sometimes I feel like I want to be better than the person's previous partner/bf/gf. But you know what..I've read a book about dating (I can't believe I was reading it) and according to that book, never compete with a ghost and the ghost will be always the winner. You will end up a loser and disappointed in the relationship.<br />
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So this kind of relationship scares me a lot... I don't expect to be better than the previous one in all aspects but I do want to be better in many aspects. Because I always have the thoughts if the the person's previous one is better than I might be forgotten easily because the ghost will be always in his mind. Eventually you might end up an uncertain relationship. What's the point of being in a relationship if your the person past is always the background and shadow in between you and him/her?<br />
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As the song says...he's gone....but he's still in your mind...he's the background of our relationship...makes me feel like i'm number one but i'm not the only one :-(<br />
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Yeah...he had a perfect heart and flawless but he's gone and i'm the one by your side....i can see in your eyes that you are not ready though you've said you are....we can't smoke without the fire i'm afraid :-(Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-56405547352679718582014-10-11T09:35:00.000+01:002014-10-11T09:56:32.621+01:00Second Best after a Ghost?It's Saturday and I am just getting up with a slight sun shine shooting my face. It is quite cool out there but still I have to go to my lab. About a month ago I was loosing my concentration doing my PhD. I tried to focus but there were so many personal problems happening that time. I played the clown and tried to cover up all the doubts. In fact, I wanted to just stopped and pull out of the journey of my PhD despite having 7 publications after 2 years 3 months (more than half way of my PhD). It was so tiring and personal problems made it even worst than I ever thought.<br />
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Anyway..i'm writing this because of the doubts shouting and playing on my mind. In fact there were whispering into my ear saying that I am taking probably the biggest risk of my life. I have taken so many risks in the last 29 years of my life but I have never done something like this. I am in the third year of my PhD (hopefully to finish soon) and if the relationship failed to work before I finish my writing up it would be a disaster for me. This, once happened to me when I was doing my undergraduate back in Malaysia. As a result of that I got B- in most of the modules I've taken despite my aims to get B+ and A- in all modules. But that was different than the one which I'm currently working on. It's a PhD and the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Everything is over the top of my head and if I slipped my concentration I will be in trouble.<br />
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For the first time ever since I was born on this earth.....I am reading a book about a relationship..it sounds funny as I am not really into novels or some sort of books which tell me about how to do things..but this time I am in it and I am riding tying to understand where exactly I am in this situation.<br />
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Entering into a relationship and fully committing into it is a risk...a huge risk really. I don't want to be the second best or next best after a ghost. I've been reading several articles on the internet and they were all very fascinating. After reading probably 5 or 6 articles, my brain is telling me that I should be more cautions when it comes into this kind of relationship. This time is so different.....<br />
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However, my heart is telling me that love is all about patient...let it grow slowly and eventually you will see the fruits. But am I being too jealous here? or am I being just over the top? or am I being disrespectful to the one who had gone two years ago? I understand the memories you've made together. I didn't expect you to change within seconds and I didn't expect you to forget everything about what you have been through with your late partner. My heart is singing every day and he's getting excited every day but my brain keeps telling him to put a great wall in front of him. Just in case something might happen before I finished my PhD..at least I would not be crumbling though I might be crushed out and tumbling.<br />
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I have a heart...and the only heart I have is the one I'm risking at the moment. I don't want to be a filler or just to fill in a hole in your broken heart. That makes me feel like I am the medicine of your broken heart because someday the medicine might be not working anymore and eventually we have to end it. Though you said I am the number one and the only one out of 6.5 billions people in this world but I suppose the main question is are you ready? or do you want me just because you want to mend your broken heart? Show to me that you are ready in this relationship.<br />
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My eyes are telling me that your grief might not ready although your heart might be ready......I feel like I'm picking up the pieces of your past life :-(<br />
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.......because i don't think you understand the difference between "moving on" and "letting go".....if you are moving on means you are healing your broken heart..but if you are letting go means you are ready for the new chapter of your life <br />
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You've seen my tears, you've seen my heart and I have showed my scars...but I haven't seen your tears...I don't want to be the second best after a ghost. I don't want to compete with a ghost because I've been told the ghost will be always the winner.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-51451800303899280172014-08-11T15:43:00.001+01:002014-10-11T09:56:17.125+01:00My PhD is Getting Closer to Its Completion Back again just after a few days from my last post. Sounds very strange because I don't always have the time to post unless I am really in a good mood to write something. Nah...today's post is about how I feel the progress of my PhD. I have completed just over 2 years 2 months of my PhD and it is getting closer and based on the recent results I've got this everything seems to be getting more exciting. Oh by the way the only reason I have very little time to write this post is because I am running an experiment again and while it's running I think it wold be better to do something...and that something is updating my blog. LOL!<br />
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Earlier results I got last Saturday while I was writing <a href="http://andrik-mcvean.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/squeezing-my-brain-before-short-holiday.html">this post </a>showed that combining different methods seems to produce better results. So that's good! I did some simple operations to find whether my framework is really working or not and it seems to be working fine...what I'm doing now is just to make sure the framework is really work instead of just a fluke! I don't think I will get the results by today but I just hope that all three experiments can be completed by tomorrow morning. At the moment my prostate cancer algorithm framework has the accuracy of ~90% but again I need to verify all of them by re running all three experiments an do a thorough calculation.<br />
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It's getting closer but I'm not sure if it is closer for a completion but certainly it is one step closer. Throughout the years of my PhD nothing came easily...just before you think you are done or you got it, something will happen and somehow you could lose your way within your project. Hence, for this moment I would like to say I am a step closer but how far to go I'm not so sure. My brain is so tired...I mean doing a PhD is something that I thought I could do but I'm riding it now..faster and slower and softer and sometimes harder..how knows when I will stop but certainly I have drawn the boundary after the first year of my PhD. I can't wait to finish my PhD..it is really tiring...it's like every day is an exam :-(<br />
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But I know I am strong and I will never give up until the moment I put the round hat on my head :-)<br />
I am here...riding it rapidly...never give me never ever....as long as I'm breathing..the word 'give up' would never appear in my head :-)Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-30038828068363232762014-08-09T13:25:00.000+01:002014-08-09T13:25:03.532+01:00Squeezing My Brain Before a Short HolidayHollaaa...back again in my little blog trying to make sure my blog is not too empty or at least something is happening :-) The moment I'm writing this post I am waiting my desktop to produce experiment results. I ran it yesterday and decided to play badminton hoped that it will just do its work and will email me the results when I got back home. Unfortunately, when reading the 357th data, something went wrong. As a result, It stopped working and produced an error which needed to be fixed. When I finished badminton and got home, I checked my email and didn't get a report from my algorithm. Then I thought there must be an error somewhere while reading one of the data. This morning, when I got the office and check MatLab, yeah I was spot on! So I had to fix a few parts of the algorithm to make it working again. But this time instead of reading it from the first data I started reading the data where it stopped before. But I have to save all the results from 1st data till 356th data. I have about 450 data all together and I just copy and paste all of them and analyse the results combination.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXs6mEy5pBicLKHL9NSg_OWXcAHNnM899OazlYUArLt21esPef6wVIICQAq5kxun0HHTM2fONWek3xHVmkGfKe2sU_2sZJdNQqxA8eybHIk9b4kE1REB1NfwFxJjZZEUjmYt18mwGAMO8/s1600/20140809_130859.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXs6mEy5pBicLKHL9NSg_OWXcAHNnM899OazlYUArLt21esPef6wVIICQAq5kxun0HHTM2fONWek3xHVmkGfKe2sU_2sZJdNQqxA8eybHIk9b4kE1REB1NfwFxJjZZEUjmYt18mwGAMO8/s1600/20140809_130859.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is my desk in the office..writing this post while waiting my algorithm to complete its job</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Anyway, It will be very busy week in the next three weeks. I have to prepare my journey to Ireland for another conference. I am looking forward to see the place. I got the feeling that it will be fairly similar with England? Wales or Scotland? Mmmm...I'm not sure but my gut is telling me these places will be very similar. That is why I am so looking forward to see Italy instead of Ireland. Well, it would another holiday for me (if you call it a short holiday) and the most important thing is to meet up with another PhD students and hopefully will make some friends :-) . But before that, I have to do a short talk to the Department's workshop on the 20th of August and that is in a few weeks time (less than two weeks actually). I need to arrange my flights and also hotel. Just after my conference I will be heading back to London as my friend nick is coming for a visit in the UK. I will update soon regarding to our preliminary plan on Nick's visit :-). Yeah all the way from North Borneo and I am excited to visit Paris, Belgium and Holland (of course England, Wales and Scotland as well). One of the most exciting and fun thing to do is camping (hopefully we can do this) as well as climbing mountains :-). But at the moment I have a task which I need to do by next Friday (next week) and have to report my Professor about the initial outcomes. Fingers crossed I will get some good results. But it will be very very busy...it's Saturday today and I am in the office on my own working on it and need to implement a couple of experiments.....Till now see ya....I got the results already...looks better than my latest method? Mmmmm...I will update soon...Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-17305751307665927662014-07-29T16:36:00.000+01:002014-07-29T16:36:29.658+01:00Accepted for Ireland and Italy!!Hello All...after several weeks I have been silent from my blog here I am updating my blog again. Updating my blog is a pleasure for me because since I started my PhD I have been so busy and didn't have much time to update it. In fact, at one point of my PhD I almost forgot the fact that I have a blog. I have put so much effort into my PhD in the last 2 years 1 month of my PhD and I hope I can finish my study in 3 years. It's not because I don't enjoy what I'm doing but I really think it's time for me to get a job and start to think about my future especially the financial side of my life. If my parents were rich then I wouldn't mind to have another two years of my PhD by concentrating more on journal publications...<br />
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After a double rejections in my <a href="http://andrik-mcvean.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-joy-of-double-rejection.html">previous post</a>, I almost lost my motivation to do my research. In fact, I thought I must be really stupid because my two papers got rejected at the international conferences. Even more hurtful when you got some stupid comments or unhelpful feedback from the reviewers make you think weather they read your paper carefully or just simply scan your paper. But for more than two years, my experience writing paper is you will definitely get stupid comments from reviewers. Maybe this is one of the main reasons why it is important to submit into very high ranking conferences. But then the acceptance rate will be very low and if your papers keep rejected by them it can be very demotivated. As a result you feel like you don't really want to do your research and eventually lose your interest. Nah..this is very dangerous..if you loosing your interest then your performance will be slowing down and at one point if you are not resistant enough you will stop and most probably end up with MPhil or you don't even get it. That's why all of my conference papers I submitted into average conferences (acceptance rate between 40% to 60%). High ranking conferences' acceptance rates are ranging between 10% to 30%. I just wish I had the time to do more investigation of my research so I could have better publications. I'm still aiming to submit paper into MICCAI and Medical Image Analysis journal which are the top publications in medical imaging.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAI1keJe1X1jWHfUEw8RjVO8XdleoS2pgq7AJh3d1EOQKYVfq4ihFcxLmPhau-lX9xhLKPBeWrmPik_1Y2iKe_4rZoxnA9f7fFsol5oO0Gwcf7Htndtm0FLNmbZk9EAMki5go5e7d2Kbo/s1600/New+Picture+(1).bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAI1keJe1X1jWHfUEw8RjVO8XdleoS2pgq7AJh3d1EOQKYVfq4ihFcxLmPhau-lX9xhLKPBeWrmPik_1Y2iKe_4rZoxnA9f7fFsol5oO0Gwcf7Htndtm0FLNmbZk9EAMki5go5e7d2Kbo/s1600/New+Picture+(1).bmp" height="105" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxuhSjaW9dbW_ME8TdkdWJJdtFr38DqlYjUHThrhe4AuHvu0kFrP1OxCHyiQU5d638EySl1hHyq9Ig2X-Rte_3FWVIn9-LDOiEsDICyS879ePnNwxuQOjAizK8b3ktTGRgDqC8XAhMXA/s1600/New+Picture+(2).bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxuhSjaW9dbW_ME8TdkdWJJdtFr38DqlYjUHThrhe4AuHvu0kFrP1OxCHyiQU5d638EySl1hHyq9Ig2X-Rte_3FWVIn9-LDOiEsDICyS879ePnNwxuQOjAizK8b3ktTGRgDqC8XAhMXA/s1600/New+Picture+(2).bmp" height="70" width="320" /></a>Anyway...after almost a month rewriting my papers and submitted them into two conferences in Ireland and Italy, finally they got accepted. I am very happy indeed because I've invested so much time into one of the two my papers. When I got the first notification email from the conference organiser saying that my paper got accepted for an oral presentation I was over the moon and felt like.."yeah I did it and I know I can do it..". Perhaps two weeks after that I got another notification email from a conference in Italy saying that my paper got accepted for an oral presentation. It was a fantastic news of course. One more time I thought "yeah I did it again! oh yeahhhh..now i'm going to Italy". Yeah I am very happy because I'm going to Milan in Italy. I really hope that I have the chance to see Venice because people said this is probably the best spot to see the beauty of Italy. I can't wait to try their food of course especially their spaghetti!! Yesterday I have just completed final version of the papers and the conference registrations (for both of them). Today I spent most of my time surveying hotels and flight tickets to Ireland and Italy. I found a few but haven't booked yet. I should do it very soon to get the best deal even though the department will pay it. The thing is I always like to get better deals..I mean why should pay more if we can get a cheaper price?...ok..ok enough about that..it's the second day of eid mubarak (the muslim festival..not sure if I spelt it correctly) and I'm carving for all sort of different biscuits. For me..it is difficult to find pretty and delicious biscuits in the UK or at least this is true at where I live (Wales). They are plenty of puddings or cakes but not biscuits. Most of them are not hand made biscuits but machine made LOL! They don't taste nice ..well some of them but most of them don't taste good. I am at the moment missing Malaysian food so badly especially the food from Borneo. Really really badly...If I'm honest the food in the UK are ridiculously plain and almost tasteless..and boring because most of them were cooked in ovens or microwaved. Arghhhh..that's really bad..that's why most British don't know how to cook when it comes to using fire. I like cooking with fire but most people here are cooking with ovens or microwaves. For me that's not cooking but your just heating up your food to cook it. Cooking when there are several processes involved in it. not just simply take a chicken out from the fridge put some olive oil and black papers and put it into the oven and wait for 2 hours and...ta..da...it's cook. wow! that's magic! LOL! (this is not cooking)...<br />
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Enough about that because at the moment I am sleepy and lazy and not in a mood. Today is a bad day for me..I feel like I want to scream on top of my lung!! But I'm trying to calm down myself and nothing had happened. I think I better have a run and hopefully I feel better after :-)<br />
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<br />Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-86760465304135612442014-05-12T17:56:00.001+01:002014-05-12T17:56:33.049+01:00The 'Joy' of Double Rejection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKoql-_JhXGrX-IQ4Wry3VCkeqAmpidwJ5Fjacu4jdLq8cuyhfw1QmHQQrYWD03FwQd0o1TJvfgwdpodv9xqB-WDMZBRP2LXNHTHoaktuFfI3oDw8l8D9m-XFZFMQLId3_ET4vMsiHNMg/s1600/New+Picture+(2).bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKoql-_JhXGrX-IQ4Wry3VCkeqAmpidwJ5Fjacu4jdLq8cuyhfw1QmHQQrYWD03FwQd0o1TJvfgwdpodv9xqB-WDMZBRP2LXNHTHoaktuFfI3oDw8l8D9m-XFZFMQLId3_ET4vMsiHNMg/s1600/New+Picture+%282%29.bmp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKoql-_JhXGrX-IQ4Wry3VCkeqAmpidwJ5Fjacu4jdLq8cuyhfw1QmHQQrYWD03FwQd0o1TJvfgwdpodv9xqB-WDMZBRP2LXNHTHoaktuFfI3oDw8l8D9m-XFZFMQLId3_ET4vMsiHNMg/s1600/New+Picture+(2).bmp" height="320" width="280" /></a>Hell ya! Today's entry is about the 'joy' of double rejection. I bet many of you have been rejected before or probably I should say unsuccessful rather than that nasty word. There is no joy of being rejected of course. I my <a href="http://andrik-mcvean.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/taking-my-deep-breaths.html">previous post</a> I talked about how was my feeling after my ICPR paper has been rejected. In fact, I said I managed to get better results. Well, it was true. But the saddest part is as soon as I posted the entry, I received an email regarding to my MIUA paper decision. I must say it was the earliest paper decision I have every received in the last two years. In all conferences I have attended or submitted a paper before, all of them extended the 'Author Notification' date to one or two days late. Initially when I open my uni email, I got an email with a header something like 'Decision paper number 49' and I thought it can't be because it was about 3 days earlier than the date posted on the conference's website. Then I slowly opened it and so scared to read the email. What I did instead is looking for any 'happy words' such as 'delightful', 'congratulations', 'pleased', etc. But you know what? I didn't find any of these words but I found the word 'regret'! Oh Shit!!! as soon as I saw this I said to myself this is another unlucky paper. Oh!!! I was really disappointed and I can feel my blood was boiling that time. I can feel my vein kicking and pumping off my red blood to my brain which caused millions of questions. For the first few minutes, it was really really hard to accept the fact that my paper has been rejected (after my ICPR paper has been rejected recently). I was so fucking upset but after half an hour my blood pressure went down. I think if I had measured my blood pressure in the first a few minutes it went up to 180/90 which is very very dangerous (I could be dead after reading the email LOL!).<br />
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I read the feedback from the reviewers. The same to ICPR, one reviewer accepted it and the other two rejected it. Next I read every single line of their comments to make sure I am wrong in some parts of my paper. I agreed with some of their comments (maybe about 20%) but the other 80% I don't think their comments are helpful. In fact, some of the comments show how naive he/she is in image processing (am I being over the top now? probably...but until you've seen this one particular comment then you understand me LOL!). Anyway, on the good side of his/her comments, he/she suggested me to do one thing which is to normalise my histograms. Initially I disagreed because histogram normalisation is implemented when we want to measure similarity between two histograms. But I persuaded my 'black heart' to just bloody do it and see how's the results. I took about 10 or 15 minutes to modify my algorithm and ran the program. After about 3 hours I got the results...ta..da...............surprisingly accuracy, sensitivity and specificity have increased 4% which makes my method produced almost 90% accuracy. But then it was only 4% and I'm still not sure how significant the increments are. But the main thing is..it is visually better to present 89% sensitivity instead of 85%.<br />
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After a long discussion with my supervisor we agreed that the reviewers did not read thoroughly my paper. They probably jumped from the first line to the third line and to the seventh line. If this is the way they did it then I would say I hope their papers will be rejected as well in other journals or conferences (wow...is this me? swearing LOL!). If my ICPR rejected paper is submitted to Portugal, my MIUA rejected paper will be submitted to Ireland. Well..well...well....what do you know? there might be reasons behind of double rejection? God knows! In a couple of weeks time I will be going to London. I hope that I can present my ICCCV paper fluently and I hope London brings some luck to me :-)......Summer is around the corner and I can wait to wear my shorts and t-shirts again. Phewwww.....I am tired I need a break either in June or July.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-41176093594004908462014-05-02T16:46:00.001+01:002014-05-02T16:46:36.338+01:00Taking My Deep Breaths<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4WjuEmLEJXpMhaZPnZj7WjVaS48hqJWOeCvZn5rTyvHhdD0nyLvoQYYYoylDQ9o-YBUN5RiVro5M0R1fWFyTtGiCFqVVhLg6iLM9f-gDwAOWVnq1QX-OI567yT87666IO1_tBvSAFXQ/s1600/1525303_814613071900648_1046610669_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4WjuEmLEJXpMhaZPnZj7WjVaS48hqJWOeCvZn5rTyvHhdD0nyLvoQYYYoylDQ9o-YBUN5RiVro5M0R1fWFyTtGiCFqVVhLg6iLM9f-gDwAOWVnq1QX-OI567yT87666IO1_tBvSAFXQ/s1600/1525303_814613071900648_1046610669_n.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a>Holla la...it's me again the Dr.Jungle boy who is always dreaming and chasing his dreams. Every day he tries his best to make one of his dreams comes one step closer. Anyway...that's not what I want to talk about in this post. The thing is that I want to talk about what I have been doing in the last two months since my last update. If you followed my <a href="http://andrik-mcvean.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-evil-march.html">previous post</a> about how disappointed I was with the rejection of my paper, finally I managed to get over of it. Really? Yeah after several weeks. In fact, I now can say there is a reason why my paper was rejected. I took about 3 solid weeks to do further investigation about the rejected paper or method. I lots of modification not only the paper but the algorithm. In terms of line of code, it was previously less than 100 but after huge changes it's now 400. That's a lot! I mean for s single algorithm in a single conference paper. When when it comes to writing or explaining the method in the paper, I was struggling to make it 8 pages. Initially I made 10 pages and till several revisions, I managed to make it 9 pages. I sent it to my supervisor and very pleased because he took only several days to review it. He got back to me with some very useful feedback and finally I managed to make it 8 pages. I submitted the paper into ICIAR conference which will be held in Portugal. This time I am very positive with my method and I really hope the paper will be reviewed by the right people and hopefully will get accepted.<br />
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The most challenging part is developing my other method while my heart is still bleeding. I mean it was in March when I was aiming to submit a paper into <a href="http://www.city.ac.uk/medical-image-understanding-and-analysis-2014">MIUA conference</a> which will be held in London. The main reasons why I wanted to submit a paper into this conference is this conference is a medical based one which means all presenters will be most likely <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirK5Zlx7fQbnMbBI1ptp9nf2GEpVFijAxpCuTllJjQSKjeHBnaeF1-OyJD-dYQI13tOTCBb0yYpcqh3SldJWd6KqajEqvsS0eu16_dgdleF4ao6CV4K72N-2y25hG5J9_k9PxhUCOshPE/s1600/1604696_823623234332965_1928423083_n.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirK5Zlx7fQbnMbBI1ptp9nf2GEpVFijAxpCuTllJjQSKjeHBnaeF1-OyJD-dYQI13tOTCBb0yYpcqh3SldJWd6KqajEqvsS0eu16_dgdleF4ao6CV4K72N-2y25hG5J9_k9PxhUCOshPE/s1600/1604696_823623234332965_1928423083_n.jpg" height="320" width="278" /></a>come from medical imaging people. It will be very good because in general in every <span id="goog_93058425"></span><span id="goog_93058426"></span>presentation you have general idea of what they will be talking about. In many conferences, most of them are generic and most probably you will end up attending a presentation which are not within your research interests. Second reason is, my supervisor is one of the steering committees of this conference. So I would like to support this conference (by submitting a paper into it). Anyway...I got the new of my paper rejection when I was developing this MIUA method (and writing the paper) and I was shattered and feel like I wanted to cry. Really? was it that bad? Yeah It was really that bad because I really wanted to attend ICPR conference and wanted to see Sweden of course. Another thing is, it's a huge conference and will be attended by hundreds of different people from all over the world. In networking point of view, this is a golden opportunity of course and making new friends! But hey! I missed it but I have already promised to myself to submit a new paper to this conference again. I will make sure to give my best shot this time! Somehow I managed to survive from March and April. It was horrible months and experience of course (not much in April but March). I do hope May will be a better month for me and June will be much nicer.<br />
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After I submitted my MIUA and ICIAR paper, it was the journal. It was a difficult one because I had to write about 17 pages (maximum 20 pages). It was a long paper and the longest paper ever I have written. I submitted it to the co-authors and got feedback from them. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPNxfDgTUW45eGwtmZTm1QHfMsHrNuPrvoM3QOrcwPOlADdpZShkCpKtwt0wwjFEyoAc4xsNNZAOjKou-BCkngaSf3mGgg-T4QF4C7sRePgP3b9ottv0o5vWAM4tlF5gydxiQVgfCrCE/s1600/1654242_830946036934018_1398586214176445367_n.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPNxfDgTUW45eGwtmZTm1QHfMsHrNuPrvoM3QOrcwPOlADdpZShkCpKtwt0wwjFEyoAc4xsNNZAOjKou-BCkngaSf3mGgg-T4QF4C7sRePgP3b9ottv0o5vWAM4tlF5gydxiQVgfCrCE/s1600/1654242_830946036934018_1398586214176445367_n.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a>Very useful comments actually. After several weeks of hurdles I finally submitted my journal and I hope God would give me some good results in the next a few months. Waiting the decision results of your conference/journal papers are worse than waiting your exam results. Because in many exams you actually know how well you did during the exams but it is very different in writing paper. You are basically proposing something you think which is right and of course there is no definite answer for that. But different reviewers have different opinions about what you think right. In their views it could be completely crap or something unacceptable at all. So it is actually very difficult to justify the criteria of an accepted paper. In many cases (which I believe many research students have done in the past) you will try to follow a general set of rules of a 'good paper'. For example, precise writing, flawless errors grammatically, using graphics to explain complicated subjects, all sections are connected each other, convincing results, experiment of a massive data, etc. Well, you name it!!!! I bet many PhD students have done this before but I'm telling you that those criteria are very subjective. Again I'm saying this..different reviewers have different opinions about it.<br />
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Right! Enough about it...because I really don't want to talk about it anymore. In the last four months I have written one journal three conference papers and I am now really tired mentally. I am now taking deep breaths and just enjoying my badminton sessions. This May I want to enjoy the month and free pressure from doing any sort of experiments. However, I am at the moment developing a new method again. Yeah a new method believe it or not. This idea came when I was reading about local binary pattern. So this new method will be based on the idea of local binary pattern. But this is not a local binary pattern based method. This is different of course! I used similarity measure metrics to measure if an unknown sample is malignant or normal based on the model constructed in the previous phase. Ha! that's sound so brilliant now LOL! But I'm taking this very slowly..I have about 30 days to do this before June. In June I am planning to combine all of my methods and hopefully will get good results. Okay folks my coffee has gone cold..now I need to make a new one and enjoy it :-)<br />
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P/s: Feeling blessed cuz I have this precious time to update my blog :-) Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-71098620996982008642014-03-27T18:32:00.001+00:002014-03-27T18:32:33.202+00:00The Evil MarchWell, here I am updating my blog just because March is an evil month for me. It has been several weeks since I updated my blog back in France. Now it's time to moan about my life being a PhD student again. I have been moaning about traveling on my own, not sure if doing a doctorate is something that I should be doing or not, and many other stuffs. Oh Shit! That's life!. Anyway, the thing is I have been working so hard recently writing papers got accepted. But recently, my paper got rejected which made me feel like I want to scream on top of my lung. The moment I received the email, my hurt beats like I just finish a 100m sprint. I was excited but at the same time I feel very nervous. Line by line I read the email till the moment I saw the word 'regret' then I realised my attempt this time is unsuccessful. Oh holly shit and crap! I always have faith with my paper especially if the paper is based on my own work. I believe that the method which I proposed in the paper has better potential in doing its job in comparison to some of the methods in the literature. But this is life, people don't think like the way you think.<br />
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But hey you..I never expect people to think like the I think, far from wanting them to think like the way i think. But I would expect people to think twice before they even say something about my work. This sounds like I can't accept the fact that my paper has been rejected. No! that's untrue! Because I can accept any criticisms but they have to be constructive. The first reviewer commented a few things about my paper which I think make sense. The second reviewer accept my paper with a few minor corrections. But the third reviewer sounds a little idiot. After discussion with my supervisor this afternoon, he also think the same. The third reviewer might be one in the 20%. For me 80% of the reviewers I would categorised qualified and the other 20% I would say, they might be qualified but they don't really understand with your work, or probably they are just too lazy to read the whole paper and just give some stupid feedback of your paper based on their assumptions. Or it could be, they are so arrogant and just simply didn't like your paper because they thought it should be done like this rather than like that. Phewwww!!!!!<br />
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I still feel the pain, sadness and disappointment. Not sure how to mend it for the next few days. In fact, I would probably be miserable for the next a few weeks. Recently, I have written another paper and submitted it to a conference in London. Maybe I will be okay after getting a good news from the conference. Otherwise, if the decision result for my latest paper get rejected again then I will be super duper miserable. Even my recent paper I already feel like a shit and demotivated to do the rest of my other work. Let alone if my latest paper got rejected. I don't know where to put my face and brain. This is even worst after my meeting with my supervisor, because he disagreed with some of the comments from the reviewers. This makes me think that I deserve better comments and should be at least invited for a poster presentation. I don't like to say it let's put it like this. The first reviewer rejected my paper but the second reviewer accepted it. The third reviewer which basically will determine whether my paper will be accepted for my paper gave last resort to my paper. Which basically mean it's up to the committees chair to decide whether to accept it or not. As it happened, the chair rejected it. Not sure why because the comments from the third reviewer were pretty rubbish and didn't make sense at all. Arghhhhh...why?.....why?why?<br />
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Changing the topic, I also lost my badminton tournament last week. Close yet too far to reach the semi final. But I didn't mind much about it because I thought there will be good news coming soon. Then it comes to my paper decision result. The whole situation made everything even worst. Till now I am writing this post it is actually very annoying. I didn't feel very sad when my second paper got rejected because I knew there wasn't much work I've done in it. It was just a review paper which doesn't have the originality in it. But my ICPR paper which i submitted to Sweden, I do think is a novelty or some sort of contribution in it and knowing this paper is rejected is so heartbreaking. This result is really demotivated me especially my eagerness to write more conference papers. I used to enjoy writing a conference paper but now the feeling and excitement is a little but low than before. Haisshhhh.....that's life! Whatever the reason is I still don't like the fact that my paper which I thought (that time) was my best one. Arghhhhhhh.........<br />
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Anyway, I am going to revise my paper based on the reviewer's comments and going to submit it to a conference in Portugal. But before that I want to fully concentrate on my journal paper first.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-28930701289385081952014-03-07T22:23:00.002+00:002014-03-07T22:23:45.270+00:00A glimpse of Nantes, the conference and some thoughts<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuD6qdPuCZeQakZUQNnGcY2ZdgmBKy6zWV8ZqVPpY17-wYrFcv_bjupOlcWmpgZf12ExoZNRfDiEE4JlRwLcC2ZxPL8RGP0UkB-OXHrNgO7-vXf4sWRrIGSaJMWunIFp_NyjGVf4cna4U/s1600/IMG_2166.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuD6qdPuCZeQakZUQNnGcY2ZdgmBKy6zWV8ZqVPpY17-wYrFcv_bjupOlcWmpgZf12ExoZNRfDiEE4JlRwLcC2ZxPL8RGP0UkB-OXHrNgO7-vXf4sWRrIGSaJMWunIFp_NyjGVf4cna4U/s1600/IMG_2166.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a>Here I go again folks, updating my blog. It has been a very busy day in the conference. By the time the conference finished I felt very tired mentally. I attended most of the sessions I wanted today except the sessions after 4PM. For most of the sessions I did ask several questions which basically means I did pay attention for most of the sessions. There were many sessions which I think very technical and only one was very easy to follow but lack of technical report in a presentation make you wonder how did the authors do it. Anyway...the thing is the audience know in general how the methodology works. But I think the presentation of the day is the keynote from University Collage London. It was about a 3D cave reconstruction. It works by flying a device to go through along the cave and as the device flies it takes lots of information about the cave such as surface, angle, interesting points, edges and many more. By taking all those information the algorithm will manipulate it for the reconstruction purpose. The most interesting part is, one of the caves they tested is the Mulu cave in Sarawak, Malaysia. In fact they are collaborating with some scientists in Malaysia.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVjGIFjahUpUlzweBaexLdc8v6j1Xy7awZyGdrpSYuqcb2Mz75DkyAVetPCcJwrxBOr_bVxgf_OVS_lovkGmcwlNGJz7hcbDekJB-iMsY5D47DhgbK1nh6SGqBD1j8jl2PEX2QgIT8Fs/s1600/IMG_2155.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPVjGIFjahUpUlzweBaexLdc8v6j1Xy7awZyGdrpSYuqcb2Mz75DkyAVetPCcJwrxBOr_bVxgf_OVS_lovkGmcwlNGJz7hcbDekJB-iMsY5D47DhgbK1nh6SGqBD1j8jl2PEX2QgIT8Fs/s1600/IMG_2155.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a>Let's talk about the conference. First of all the conference venue facilitates are first class. Secondly, the services provided by the conference committees was superb! Thirdly, the food was really is amazing. The first day of the conference I gave a 7 out of 10 but today it was 8. I must say, although the french don't use much spicy in their cooking they still manage to make their food so tasty. Don't talk about the desserts. It was 8 and 8.5 for yesterday and today, respectively. There were so many biscuits on tables but I didn't really treat myself with those because I knew they are fattening. So far, everything went so well especially the conference but there is one thing I notice which is so different then the rest of the conference I've attended. For all the conference I've been, for lunch the conference committees always invite us to finish the food. But here in France, it's so different because we were only allowed to have once for every course. Today I wondered if the food were actually all finished. So I stayed in the lunch hall till everybody finished. Guess what I found out? There were so much food left and I don't understand what they were going to do with all those food. Such a waste! I mean why can't they just ask us to just finish it (sounds greedy)? Or perhaps they save it for the staffs (this sounds a bit cheeky). So yeah I am a bit disappointed with lunch because the food were really good but we were not allowed to have as much as we can (greedy again).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojPRVr9NMJw3LvzjUy8OG4HbghJOLzCsdUdJxIuKcjDUHzaeyhFHrk4CIp_uxxp_IoHxjSqY7CToc6kXVdFdBW0jkNZdgoaOPKUeIgum4r7lRNND0xFed0SKkTFHN9wCws2c78MgRGiQ/s1600/IMG_2146.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojPRVr9NMJw3LvzjUy8OG4HbghJOLzCsdUdJxIuKcjDUHzaeyhFHrk4CIp_uxxp_IoHxjSqY7CToc6kXVdFdBW0jkNZdgoaOPKUeIgum4r7lRNND0xFed0SKkTFHN9wCws2c78MgRGiQ/s1600/IMG_2146.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a>Okay, now let's talk about Nantes, where the conference is. I am staying in a studio apartment hotel which is very nice because it's clean, free wifi, and quite spacious. I always make sure my room has unlimited wifi access. There are some expensive hotel rooms don't provide free wifi or internet connection to their guests. Nantes is definitely not a small city. It is actually quite a big one. Before i cam here I thought Nantes is a small city and I could walk around it within a day. I was completely wrong. But this city is not really a place that I would like to visit regularly because there's not much attraction or interesting places here. I think it has a couple of museums here but I am not really into that. I like a place which has something very rare and difficult to find at other places. It has several ancient buildings but many of them are already replaced by new modern buildings. In fact there are quite numbers of modern buildings built among the old ones.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqBcAO7OPad5wY2nhE06cd9HeQ5GhK3JEl3a3fFaPS326yjUyKsoKZKrk18264Kji7It7OzsEpdVryO-vtgIeMTbVE-8SmImPAeBsS5rVx6oRSw21FFzOk9uJ147hkg2t9u72qajWLvM/s1600/IMG_2174.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqBcAO7OPad5wY2nhE06cd9HeQ5GhK3JEl3a3fFaPS326yjUyKsoKZKrk18264Kji7It7OzsEpdVryO-vtgIeMTbVE-8SmImPAeBsS5rVx6oRSw21FFzOk9uJ147hkg2t9u72qajWLvM/s1600/IMG_2174.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a>Food in France is generally very good but I haven't done the whole experiment yet so I can't say much but so far all the food I had in and off conference were really good. Much better than the ones I had in germany and hong kong (but the food on streets in hong kong were really good).<br />
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So tomorrow will be the last day of the conference. But I will only attend half day. I hope some of the people in the conference will be free so I can see the other side of the river in Nantes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilzDn36bMde6-ESKF8GeW9g8C5SLQXMe6XYcuYxbtvUdbA-d-hk35c-s3R6sFt3BRWMi2EAYAiR3XLKz62-gV1HvnkhSwiID_ClzTg7HOQGQJvpJomAHMzTvpk__4VdkN8EPd9r7YQQMg/s1600/IMG_2242.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilzDn36bMde6-ESKF8GeW9g8C5SLQXMe6XYcuYxbtvUdbA-d-hk35c-s3R6sFt3BRWMi2EAYAiR3XLKz62-gV1HvnkhSwiID_ClzTg7HOQGQJvpJomAHMzTvpk__4VdkN8EPd9r7YQQMg/s1600/IMG_2242.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a>I was searching a conference about medical image analysis yesterday and I found two or three of them which will be held in September and November. So, most probably I will be submitting/writting a couple of papers by because June or May (I have very high expectation here!). For my PhD before i'm planning to write up my thesis (in 3 years), I would love to have 7 conference papers and 2 journals. But that is my highest expectation. My lowest expectation would be 5 conference papers and 1 journal. My other top expectation is to submit a journal into number 1 journal in medical image analysis. But this is very difficult indeed. I'm not sure if I can achieve this but I will definitely do my very best because having a journal published in a number 1 journal in the world in medical image analysis would give a huge boost to my CV in my academic career. Anyway...stop about blogging..I think it's time to go to bed. I am tired and just finished watching the all england badminton 2014. Interesting matches and would love to see some good results tomorrow. Okay folks..night night....p/s: unedited xxAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-1268544612765103952014-03-05T22:06:00.002+00:002014-03-05T22:29:25.229+00:00Exploring Each of My ThoughtsIt has been almost two months since I last updated my blog. If you look back to my posts, the last one was in January 2014 and this is the second post of 2014! Yippieeee! I am happy because I know, I don't usually have time to update my blog. Updating my blog is something so precious for me. I used to update my blog several times a day. In fact, when I just started my blog I was so obsessed and updated my blog almost every hour. It was insane of course I don't know where the hell my ideas came from. Some of them just a copy and paste post of course. Anything I found interesting from others' blogs I put them on mine as well. Correct! That's not clever at all. But I was a newbie that time and all I wanted to do is to update my blog and hoped the contents are interesting.<br />
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Well, I have so much I wanted to say but I have so little time as I need to go to bed very soon. I am currently in France, more specifically in Nantes. I never heard this place before but it quite a nice town actually. When I first arrived here I thought it's a small town but then after wondering around, this is a well sized place. Not too huge neither too small.. but just nice! Okay I am in France and will be attending a conference tomorrow. My aim is to attend all as many presentations (medical imaging) as possible. I only interested in medical imaging because that's why research area at the moment. Okay now let's go through each of my thoughts (LOL!)<br />
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1. Attending a conference on your own is always odd! I have attended three international conferences so far and all by myself traveling from the UK. It was in Germany, Hong Kong and now in France. All the national conferences I've attended so far were accompanied by some other PhD students/Post Doc. Therefore, for every conference I always hope I can make new friends/contacts (which is always the case). It is always nice to be able to keep in touch with people (doesn't matter whether they are from the same research area or not) via email or facebook. The most common way to keep n touch with the people I have known or met in the conference is via facebook. It seems to be very effective way (not sure why). So let's hope I can make some friends tomorrow.<br />
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2. I feel happy when people follow my blog and get back to me how inspiring my blog is especially achieving my ambitions. Yeah if you guys want to know who I was then you can go to the very first post of my blog. You can see how terrible my writing (English). It just recently I have improved a lot. My IELTS results weren't that amazing. I just managed to get band 6.5 in overall and only band 6 for my writing. I think this is a minimum requirement for most UK universities. But I remember it was very hard that time because I was working as a software engineer with Motorola that time and I had to take a night class from 8 till 10PM every night. It was very tiring actually but my determination pushed me to the edge of my limit. I hope this blog does not just inspires people who want to succeeded in life but also to those who have been trying hard...my advise is don't give up ..keep doing it...keep tying it. God knows when is the right time for you and you never know..because at the moment you surrendered success might be just around the corner of your life.<br />
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3. I've read several articles about PhD students committed suicides, mental problems, sick, etc. Wow! I think I am quite far away from these. It is quite worrying! That is why I always have physical exercise at least 3 times a week, 2 hours per session. I usually managed to make it five times a week but sometimes i was just too tired. It's weird how much the effect of mental energy to our physical energy. I spent most of my time in the office thinking different solutions of my PhD problems without any physical efforts but by the time I finished in the office I was so tired. Most of the time I just pushed myself to go to the gym and have a 5 or sometimes 8KM run. After my run my head did feel relax and showers make it even better. But hey folks, in many cases doing a PhD is a choice. People took effort to make applications as well as the scholarships. For me, if you have made the effort to apply for a PhD plus the scholarship, then you should have known and ready the challenges are. Doing a PhD is not easy. I must say it is very very difficult. It's not just how brilliant you are but it is a combination of so many aspects of yours. You need to be tough mentally, emotionally, good management skills, etc. Trust me, if you want to do a PhD think about it again.<br />
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4. Up to now since i started my PhD (1 year 9 months), i already have 4 conference papers accepted, 1 conference paper under review, 1 rejected conference paper and 1 journal paper under review. At least I know I have done 7 attempts so far. I'm not sure if this is good or not. It seems like I am very much obsessed with the number of papers. Recently, my paper i submitted to London has been accepted. But I do really hope the paper I submitted to Sweden will be accepted as well. I am so damn crazy and desperate want to see this conference and the country of course. I am a bit worry because when I checked the paper i submitted there were a few minor errors. But I do really hope that the reviewers don't really get too fussy about it because they can be amended within half an hour. So I am planning to write a paper for MIUA conference, I have two in mind so far but I don't really know which one I should go. The main problem is I have no idea how the results look like because I haven't run the experiments yet. I hope to get some good results so I have something to write. Anyway, back to the under review. This is probably the toughest and waiting for the result is really daunting. In many cases in exams you know how well you did in the exam but writing a conference paper or a journal paper is really scary because writing a paper usually will take about 2 weeks for a decent one. Some people may take less or more. When you finished writing your paper, it seems to be okay and sometimes you have very good feeling that the paper will get accepted. But then in the reviewers' views your paper might be just another piece of shit which doesn't worth a penny. Hence rejected! So till now waiting for the results for my other two papers are so uncomfortable. <br />
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5. Okay this is the last in my mind. I have some other but I need to go to bed. I've been up since 3AM to catch my flight from Manchester airport to Paris and then to nantes, France. I am now so tired, but the last thing I want to say is that sometimes I have a feeling that I should not be doing a PhD now. I should be doing something else. I don't know why I'm doing this PhD. I should be working now and making money, saving and holiday. At the back of my head I always have this very very bad feeling that doing a PhD is not the correct path for me. But then when I look back again what I have prayed to God and how I'm doing my PhD now I think I have done the best decision of my life. Yet this is very uncertain because I don't know what happen to me when I finished my PhD. I might become one of those people who has a doctorate qualification but never used it. That would be really sad otherwise. But again some people say everything happens for a reason.Well, time will tell. So much plans but so little time left. Money is very important to start up something. In this world if you don't have the money there is no other way you can start something. So I hope after my PhD it's gonna be another chapter of my life. New start with new challenges.<br />
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Mmmm..okay I think I have written enough for this post. Not really I have more to write but my eyes can't stand anymore. I am so sleepy and really tired. I've been up since 3AM. I have a conference tmrw and I need to be fresh and sharp in the conference especially during my session. Okay folks..bye for now and I'll see you again in my next post. I will try my best to write a post this week but no promises! :-) xxAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-29580678762705131072014-01-08T19:45:00.001+00:002014-01-08T23:44:08.175+00:00A glimpse of Hong KongHolla all...here I am back again after so many weeks or perhaps months. I have been so bloody busy (usual excuse but true). First and for most my paper which I submitted to France has been recently accepted for a poster presentation. This means I already have three accepted publications so far and I do really hope that my will have more publications. I always believe that the more publications you have the better your chance to pass your phd viva. This might be not true in all cases but I believe it's true in many cases. Anyway..that's not what I want to talk about in this post. It's about my opinion of Hong Kong.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEp0jCIUtWLie9gV_glA6ub8ipMfPbBco0xT42rXdn7JOeIW1OPtJQeEjMweE667lZM4iaVnJ_psvFKG4fbDaJoqTfaeGTWb2L4uQuO8TMo2uE51URpQ3d8nL9hJj_uottaqbe29vaIaM/s1600/1522035_758857357476220_156581854_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEp0jCIUtWLie9gV_glA6ub8ipMfPbBco0xT42rXdn7JOeIW1OPtJQeEjMweE667lZM4iaVnJ_psvFKG4fbDaJoqTfaeGTWb2L4uQuO8TMo2uE51URpQ3d8nL9hJj_uottaqbe29vaIaM/s1600/1522035_758857357476220_156581854_n.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hong Kong from the top of Victoria peak</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I stayed in Hong Kong for 10 days in Dec 2013 for a conference. But the actual conference was only three days and the other seven days was my holiday. I'm writing this post in Hong Kong as my flight to Paris is tomorrow morning. I'm staying up don't want to fall asleep. I hope to get a good sleep on the plane to Paris. Anyway, y first impression of Hong Kong is it's an amazing city full of dollars and luxuries. I remember when I was on the coach going to my hotel from the airport I saw high raised multimillion dollars apartments decorated with beautiful neon lights. At that time I am thinking this city is another New York. As soon as i checked into my hotel room brain said let's explore and see what this city can give. I am an explorer and a traveler of course. I like to compare to different things to get the best of them. But I thought it was too late and didn't proceed my plan but managed to go out for a couple of hours for my dinner. My first dinner in Hong Kong cost me about 100HKD. I didn't realise it was expensive that time until the next day when I was walking on one of the popular streets. I saw there were so many restaurants and stalls with much cheaper prices less than 50 HKD.<br />
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Anyway it was an experience. That's always happen especially when we are new in that place. I continued my exploration. As I'm walking on a street with multimillion dollars building on both sides I noticed they use lots of bamboos scaffolding. It is very strange because they don't look safe at all but according to the local people I've asked. Bamboos scaffolding is very cheap hence maximise the contractors' profits. This is indeed very dirty way/trick of minimising the cost. However, in terms of infrastructure development, HK is probably having one of the best in the world. I don't think UK, France or Germany has the facilities what HK can offer. For example the trains services is every minute and the latest is every 3 minutes where in those countries could take up to 5 to 8 minutes in their capital cities. On the other hand, night life in HK is alive every single night. It seems like the city never sleep especially eating places, markets , bars and pubs make most streets never get dark.<br />
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So how about the society or the people? I'm not sure how do you measure politeness but they never hold the door for you and they certainly never say thank you if your gave a way to them. Saying thank you or showing a sign of courtesy is almost null in their life. These sort of acts is probably something very strange for them. Cutting or jumping a queue is something normal. I dare to say this because I have experienced it several time when I was in HK, It happened in fast food restaurants and counter tickets.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNbXwCtogXSKBZo2HVYVd4Y9Hmnbey8KO93oOro9pLNt0ncXN4SUvfCiesDmwxzooGpPS3uh8gInBSW9jDU99GKI4UnifspxnRLcrfvowbY1wYaTxRU0oXHAq7Ak0EAPyP9qO3bs6qg4/s1600/1082137_758833730811916_1720934583_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNbXwCtogXSKBZo2HVYVd4Y9Hmnbey8KO93oOro9pLNt0ncXN4SUvfCiesDmwxzooGpPS3uh8gInBSW9jDU99GKI4UnifspxnRLcrfvowbY1wYaTxRU0oXHAq7Ak0EAPyP9qO3bs6qg4/s1600/1082137_758833730811916_1720934583_o.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Finally I never been to a city where I caught bugs so quickly. Only in HK because the air is actually polluted badly. I had a few bad days in HK but I must say I had an amazing experience as well. HK is a beautiful and very nice place to visit but I don't think it's the best place to live in the world.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-71456851346029340482013-10-12T13:18:00.000+01:002013-10-12T13:18:03.845+01:00Learning To Be A Researcher Hello guys, I'm back again after more than a month. It has been really busy months for me. Since I started my PhD I can hardly breath. In fact, it feels like everyday is like another day but with the same hope. For those of you who don't know when I started my PhD, it was June 2012 and it's October now which basically means it has been 1 year 4 months. If someone asked me how does it feels being a researcher I would answer like a shit! yeah I mean it. Nothing to be proud of being a PhD student. My life is surrounded with data, complex mathematics equations, other researchers' updates which I'm not sure whether I want to know about it or not, full of worries because I'm so keen to finish this project in 3 years (1 or 2 months extension is okay) and another one is my life is full of questions which I think nobody can answer them. First of all, my CMBE conference paper in Hong Kong has been accepted and I have applied for a travel funding from BMVA but not sure if I will get it or not. I do hope to get it so my I could save a lot of money on my expenses this year. Otherwise I will be in trouble because I don't really want to use my
own money for most of the expenses. It will be very expensive. Perhaps
it will cost more more than £800 and that is not included my flight
going back home in Sabah. The total estimation cost might be about £1300
but the the extra a few hundreds pounds I will use the department's
travel funding, some from my supervisor maybe, etc. If I can go to Hong
Kong in December, then I will be going back to Sabah as well. This
means, I will be celebrating Christmas in a warm weather. Maybe a little
bit unusual because most of the people in my country associate that
special day with snow LOL! But that is a typical thinking of the people
back in Sabah (too much western influence).<br />
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I have recently submitted a paper to France as well but the acceptance of notification will on the in the middle of December. I think based on the four papers I have written so far, the fourth paper would be my best. Therefore, I am pretty confident this paper has a good chance to be accepted. But I'm not holding my breath because the result might be completely the opposite. At the moment, I am developing another method which is the third method of detecting prostate abnormality within the peripheral zone. This time I am trying to exploit the dark regions by using histogram analysis techniques. The basic idea behind this method is, making comparison of the low intensity values between the left and right peripheral zone. By using certain matrices, if the difference is more than certain threshold values then we assume that abnormality appears within the prostate. Up to now, the accuracy for this third method only 75.7% and I'm aiming to achieve more than 80%. I actually put a higher target this time which is 85% but to increase 10% is actually incredibly hard. But I am trying very hard to achieve it. I can actually see a very good prospect of this method if I can find one more feature which can distinguish those left and right peripheral zone. But usually the one last feature which basically means the last indicator is the most difficult part in research. I am so keen to find it out and hopefully before the end of this year I can write another paper to be published. I know it's not easy and it will be bloody difficult but I will keep doing it till I have the answer. On the other hand, I am planning to add more data which basically means I will be testing the method with more than 100 slices. At the moment I am using 70 slices and based on this data set the result shows a good potential. <br />
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Now when good results achieved, we should be talking about conferences. Which one shall I go? A top conference but the topics are very general or a lower ranking conference but the topics are very specific. My supervisor advised to submit into a conference which is less popular conference but the topics are very specific. At the moment I have two in my mind. The fist one is ICPR and the second one is ICBES. ICPR is highly ranking whereas ICBES is a new conference but the second one only accept papers within the biomedical engineering field. The fact is, if you going to submit a paper into a more general conference you would end up attending a presentation which is not within your field. I would say just wasting your time attending the conference especially after your presentation. Secondly, most researchers if they are looking for citations or references they tend to search for conference proceedings which are specifically within their fields. But I will be having a meeting with my supervisor on Monday and hopefully he can give me his best suggestion. It's either Sweden or Prague. Oh yeah! I'm feeling excited now :-) I honestly don't mind which one but I must say Sweden will be cold and Prague will be warm. Therefore, I will be choosing Prague LOL!<br />
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Okay, that's some of my updates today. It's Saturday and I am in the office running my experiments hoping to get some good results. Slurping my mocha (my favorite drink). Life is getting exciting but I can feel that my soul and body is wearing out and I'm not sure how long can keep it up but I know that I will be there. I still haven't found my 'torch light' to light my way up in the middle of my research world but at least I have a wooden stick help me out one step ahead.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-70006497513496099662013-08-19T00:47:00.003+01:002013-08-19T00:50:02.400+01:00It's about what you eat NOT how much you eat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yeah I'm back again updating my blog which I find it quite fascinating (lol!). For me able to write an update my blog is an achievement because it means I have some free time which is also basically mean I probably a little bit ahead of my schedule (i'm not sure if this is really true or not though). I will be going to treat myself a nice chinese buffet tomorrow and i will make sure that i will have the best from the restaurant (correction: I have gone and successfully did it again). For some reasons i actually found a new technique on how to avoid your stomach feels full easily. LOL! No..no...this is only for those people who appreciate food very much (like me of course!). Most people usually eat their meal starting from starters, main course and desserts accordingly. However, my last experience has proved that eating your meal reversely will make your appetite stays longer. Believe it or not this has really worked to me and I believe this will work again tomorrow. So, instead of starting your meal with a starter, try to start with some cakes but not an ice cream. Why? because ice creams contain more fluid than a cake and it will fill up your stomach quite easily. That's why a bowl of soup is definitely not a good starter especially when you are in a buffet. After having some cakes, I would suggest you to go for the main course followed by the starters and finish with something cold which like an ice cream.<br />
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Okay peeps, now let's talk about junk food, fast food and the ones what I call a proper food. I started reading about healthy food when I was about 13 and that was about 15 years ago (jezzz...did I've just revealed my age?). If I still can remember it correctly, fruits were ranked on top of everything followed by water (I mean a still water and not the fizzy one!). Bad food are those contain excessive saturated fat or too much sugar. Therefore, for the sake of simplicity, to know how healthy your meal is depending on how much saturated fat and sugar in it (of course in some cases when we are talking about an nutrients we will be looking some other things such as salt, calories, etc). But in my case those two things are very important will consider them first before anything else. Saturated fat are okay but remember that consuming/taking them more than your recommendation daily intake may cause you a lot of health troubles. But hey, I'm not a nutritionist who knows everything about nutrition (not even a dietitian, or perhaps they are similar) .<br />
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I've learned or started cooking when I was about 9 or 10 years old. As far as I can remember, cooking is always something I really enjoy. In fact, when I was a little (around 7 or 8) I used to play with my nieces doing some sort of dummy cooking. It was taste good at that time of course but the experience was fantastic and I enjoyed every second of it. Eating green leaves are something that I believe every human on earth must do. Cook your food at home is something that I believe all youngsters have to do. Not too much fast food such as KFC or McDonald. I admit that I went to these places sometimes but I would say probably once every 4 month? or maybe 5 months? Yeah because I know that I can cook myself and I do not need to go to expensive places to get delicious because I can do it by myself. So why should pay more? In some circumstances, we cannot avoid from going to take away places (but take away restaurants/shops aren't as bad as fast food) but I notice in many cases (especially in the UK?) most people tend to buy their food from these places. The worst thing is many of them couldn't really afford it but for the sake of 'want to be seen by other people that they can afford it' they will dig every single penny they've got to buy it. <br />
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Some/many might argue with this post. It's hard to cook or even some of you might say, cooking taking a lot time. Well, well, well,...the fact is, the more you do cooking the less the time will be taken. The first a few weeks you will find it a bit slow but after sometimes (i would say at least a month), everything will be so quick because all you need to do is just to reuse some of the recipes that you have cooked before. If you want to do something different, most dishes or meals are actually using similar ingredients. You don't have to know many different food to be able to make delicious food. All you need to know is just a few and from that you should be able to modify the ingredients to something else. As you might can see, I have several photos of my food on this post. They are all delicious and to be quite honest I don't think you can get the same taste or standard if go to a restaurant which might cost around £30++. They are all using similar ingredients with just two or three different. But the tastes are completely different although 70% of the ingredients are exactly the same. Well that's the power of cooking! You don't have to master many different cooking skills. You just need to master one or two and from there you can do lots of different dishes. There are so many fat people out there because they don't see/watch carefully what they eat. Lack of exercise is of course one of the causes getting fat but what I'm saying here is, if you watch carefully what you eat then you don't have to worry about doing exercise. I always believe 'it's about what you eat and NOT how much you eat'. A simple example, if you eat 100g of steamed rice + 2 chicken wings + 100g vegetables + 100g watermelon = 650 - 750 kcl. However, if you consume 300g chocolate cake that is about 1100kcl!! Can you see the difference????????If you eat more healthy food it's filling up your tummy with small calories but even if you eat small amount of unhealthy food you end up with +350kcl! Therefore, I would like to emphasize it again that "It's about what you eat NOT how much you eat"!!!Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-84523372660569531402013-08-16T00:22:00.001+01:002013-08-16T00:22:31.348+01:00Research break on Isle of Skye, Scotland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marsco mountains on Skye</td></tr>
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I can't believe the fact that I am back again updating my blog. It has been almost a year or parhaps more than a year (you see I can't even remember when did I last update my blog). Well, I must say doing a PhD probably one of the toughest experiences I have ever encountered so far. It's not about how briliant you are but it's about your patience, your motivation, ambition, timing, management, etc. Seems like it is harder than running in a marathon. I am writing this post after completed the 14th month of my doctorate studies. On paper I have about 22 months to go before I will be submitting my thesis.<br />
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Anyway, last week I was on Skye a beautiful island of Scotland. After a hard work on my research I finally decided to have a break for about 11 or 12 days. I am glad I had that short break because when I was there my brain was completly free and I didn't even think about my research except in the last a few days. For some reasons I can't really leave my research too long otherwise it's would be very difficult to get back. So an 11 or 12-day break was actually perfect or maybe just a bit too long (not really). But when I was back a few days ago I found it was very difficult to start especially the writing part. I needed to revise some of my code and tried to understand what I have done before the break. Believe or not it took me the whole day to put my mind back on track.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Talisker Bay on Skye</td></tr>
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Okay, okay let's talk about my holiday although not many of you might be reading this. Skye is definately a beautiful island and apart of its cold and wet weather I have no hesitation to rate the island itself 4.5/5. It's a shame really because the wet and cold weather ruined some of my plans and I believe it wasn't just me but most of the tourists who are comming to Skye. Even worst for those who travelled thousands of miles and greeted with and opened heaven and strong breeze. I noticed those who came from Japan, China and Korea or even from east Europe had to go through the bad weather condition. They had no choice as they had limited time staying on the island. They have to go through the wet and cold weather for sight seeing or keep themselves dried and warmed but missed the chance to see the island.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fairy pool on Skye</td></tr>
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One thing which is very visible on the island is the people especially the older generation are still very traditional especially their costume. I remember one afternoon when a friend and I went out for fresh shellfish, we saw a men out for gardening with his very traditional scottish costume. I don't really know what exactly the name of some of the things his put on but they do look very traditional. Unlike England, Scotland seems to be prouder with their cultures (I might be completly wrong here but I was about 2 years in England and never seen people wearing their traditional costumes or parhaps they never had one). Secondly, I think there are more tourists than locals on the island. I went to a small town called Potree and I remember the number of coaches from different europe countries are just incredibles. It's a small island with small towns and you hardly meet locals there except when you are in town but it seems like the place is so popular. I noticed most of the visitors are from Holland, Germany, France and from China or Korea. I didn't think this place is popular for asians to be quite honest.<br />
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Well, the more I discovered the the island the more questions appeared on my little complicated brain. Another thing I noticed about the island is there are so many huge houses and beautiful of course. In contrast with rural places in Wales, most of the houses are quite fancy instead of just a square box with a roof on it. This makes me wonder what are the source income of most people on the island which made them can afford such fancy houses. But then I suppose people who came there or parhaps moved up there are retired or just wanted to have a second place. Again, it's a shame actually because most of the houses are beautiful with amazing views but again most of the time it is wet and windy which makes me think it's like living in a jar with a beautiful view but you can't really go outside of the jar and enjoy it. I find it very fustrating in some aspects. Imagine you have the money but can't buy it.<br />
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After days being on Skye, I realised what i enjoyed the most apart of climbing mountains. It's the food which I find fascinating. I always like food and up to this age (I'm getting an old fucker) food is always a passion in my life. Especially the shellfish, everything is so fresh and I would say really cheap compared to the ones I had in England and Wales. There are lots of fishmongers and they sell what they've caught from last night or this morning (arn't this amazing?). Living in a huge cities like cardiff, london or Edinburgh is probably good in some aspects but living in a remote place like Skye, when it comes to a fresh food I would say it's unbeatable! The cost of living is definately low but you still can enjoy a beautiful, fresh and delicious food (the most important is healthy food).<br />
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Well, I don't like the midges though. To be quite honest, they are worst than mosquitos. At least mosquitos don't suck/bite your head. Midges are definately nastier than any flying insects I have ever known. Luckily my skin is coloured and for some reasons (i dont know why) the midges bites didn't leave any marks on my skin. So I was okay in this case compared to a friend of mine who has a white skin, there were so many red marks after bitten by the poxy midges.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tattie bogle on Skye</td></tr>
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Phew!!! before i forgot, tattie hunting is definately unforgettable. Every year they have tattie bogle competation. A tattie-bogle is a device (sort of), tradeetionally a human figure dressed in auld claes, or mannequin, that is uised tae discourage birds sic as craws frae disturbin craps. They have some many different figures and my favourite one is a skeleton women in red dressing sitting on a roofed bench with a written board next to her "Waiting for the perfect men"! I have seen a photo on the internet but I never thought someone on skye would make a figure if it.<br />
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The last day on skye, leaving very early morning. Had to get up very early which I didn't like. Sad to leave but I did enjoy short break. Skye is a beautiful, peaceful and a nice place to have a holiday but my gut tells me that I'm not sure if it is a place that I want to spend the rest of my life or not. In fact, my little complicated brain and my fragile heart always never really landed on skye although my eyes have fallen in love with skye. I do still think I want to spend some of my life in huge cities but I would be happier to spend my retirement life in a calm, beautiful and warm place. Life is only once and never twice let alone three, so let's enjoy the life.....take it as it comes leave it as it goes.Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-33118698523492706182013-01-06T16:23:00.005+00:002013-01-06T16:26:38.754+00:00ANUGERAH JUARA LAGU 27 FINAL: Keputusan AJL 27 Akhir, 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Keputusan Anugerah Juara Lagu 27, 2013...Here I am updating the lastest results of the most popular song competation in Malaysia.<br />
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Winner: Yuna (sang by Aizat), Terukir di bintang</div>
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1st runner: Azlan and The Typewritter, Idola</div>
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2nd runner: Hafiz, Ku Akui</div>
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Best performance: Black and RJ, Rahsia ini</div>
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Best Vocal: Hafiz, Ku Akui</div>
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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.</div>
Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-4276879483004201272012-12-18T16:48:00.002+00:002012-12-19T16:03:53.960+00:00Last post of 2012I 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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!<br />
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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.<br />
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Okay peeps..I think I'm finished with today's post and see you again in my next post.<br />
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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!Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-38435371054649596202012-10-10T23:04:00.000+01:002012-10-10T23:04:18.909+01:00First 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.<br />
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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!<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Anway...huh!!! I;m rambling and I've just finished it. I'm going to bed now....zzzzz<br />
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p/s: This is an unedited post...Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-69680497193643087672012-09-24T22:07:00.002+01:002012-09-24T22:07:42.619+01:00Red Culins 6 Peaks, Scotland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <div>
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Okay, changing the subject...this week is the induction week and guess what? It's gonna be pretty boring.. <div>
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Andrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-80234114198026138242012-09-18T23:08:00.000+01:002012-09-18T23:08:00.152+01:00So Much Effort With Empty ResultIn 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.<br />
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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!).<br />
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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....<br />
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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 :-DAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7510045889177579260.post-11179816690317411632012-09-17T23:14:00.001+01:002012-09-17T23:14:33.094+01:00Too Much Badminton But I Enjoyed ItToday 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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!).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 xAndrik McVeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06323610085436964527noreply@blogger.com0