Coffee at Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Managed to have time in café "Les Deux Magots" and Café de Flore. Both have unique histories. I ordered a café expresso spécial Flore and you just sat over there looking at the street and crowd....

Baby Birthday

My little daughter approaching 1 year old tomorrow!

Router + ADSL modem

After getting tired finding a suitable all-in-one ADSL wireless/wired router for my home usage, I decided to purchase a purely simple ADSL modem and worked out the RS pro which is suitable for my home usage. The firmware is customized by myself, supporting various application, such as Firewall, QoS, and etc.

IEEE Senior Member

I have successfully in my application as IEEE Senior Member.

Senior Member is the highest grade for which IEEE members can apply. To be eligible for application, candidates must:
be engineers, scientists, educators, technical executives, or originators in IEEE-designated fields;
have experience reflecting professional maturity;
have been in professional practice for at least ten years;
show "significant performance" over a period of at least five of their years in professional practice.

Yes! It's Down!

So Yes ID down on launching day...

4G defined: WiMax and LTE don't qualify

Salesman always lies to you. Same as one of the WiMAX operator is Malaysia.

Deepest Condolences

I still hope for the miracles yesterday morning. But it was confirmed. The tragedy that happened to my old school hurts me a lot. My brother who used to be a dragon boat sailor and actively participated in the competition would also regret what have happened. I still remember that he mentioned how he went through all the dangerous moments when they trained in Batu Feringghi. Now, a lot of peoples blame that the dragon boat races should be held in Teluk Bahang dam instead of near to Jelutong Express-way. I always remember how the excitement of my brother when he said that the boat race will soon go to shift to somewhere near Queens Bay mall. He said that it could then attract more crowds to watch the races. Off course, he did not have the change to do so……

Seriously Codemn Those Stupid Acts

I cannot resist my angry to those who try to provoke and destroy the harmony of the countries! Again, a sad day for Malaysia!

BBC

Technology for Assiting the Poor

I always believe that with all that I have learned so far. I should be one day helping others using the technology I have and contributing back to the society.

By the way, you see how peoples come out with the research ideas that helping the social.

Energy Harvesting Active Networked Tags for Disaster Recovery Applications (EnHANTs) focuses on the design of disaster recovery system that will enable locating people trapped by fires and survivors of structural collapse. The key components of the system are Active Networked Tags that will be embedded in the building structure and carried by the users (for example, attached to their clothing). Other components will include cell phones and wireless mobile devices.

The active tags will be small and flexible device that will harvest energy from the environment (for example from light or movement) and will have ultra-low power communications capabilities. They will be attached to objects that are traditionally not networked and adapt their communications and networking mechanisms to satisfy their energy constraints.

In case of emergency, they will move to a special mode in which they form a network and transmit information (for example, last known location) to receivers which will be deployed by the rescue forces around the disaster site. In a long term emergency (a structural collapse), the tags will optimize the energy consumption for continuous and efficient operation.

Project Site: http://enhants.ee.columbia.edu

CelloPhone

Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA;
Dr. Aydogan Ozcan, Dr. Neven Karlovac, Dr. Yvonne Bryson

In resource limited settings, such as in the villages of Africa, there is no infrastructure to conduct even very simple medical tests such as blood counts. To combat various infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV there is an urgent need to be able to analyze bodily fluids such as whole blood samples in a cost-effective and simple way that can even be conducted by minimally trained personnel. For such blood tests to be performed in the field, we need wireless technologies that can capture the micro-scale signatures of various blood cells even at resource poor settings. And cell phones offer a great match for this purpose since: (1) they are already widely used almost everywhere; and (2) they are equipped with advanced technologies that could be tailored towards the needs of such medical tests. Such a wireless health monitoring technology that runs on a regular cell-phone would significantly impact the global fight against infectious diseases in resource poor settings such as in Africa, parts of India, South-East Asia and South America.

The CelloPhone Project aims to develop a transformative solution to these global challenges by providing a revolutionary optical imaging platform that will be used to specifically analyze bodily fluids within a regular cell phone. Through wide-spread use of this innovative technology, the health care services in the developing countries will significantly be improved making a real impact in the life quality and life expectancy of millions.

The core technology of the CelloPhone Project relies on an innovative on-chip platform, developed by Prof. Aydogan Ozcan’s Group at UCLA, which we term LUCAS—Lensfree Ultra-wide field Cell monitoring Array platform that is based on Shadow Imaging. For most bio-medical imaging applications, directly seeing the structure of the object is of paramount importance. This conventional way of thinking has been the driving motivation for the last few decades to build better microscopes with more powerful lenses or other advanced imaging apparatus. However, for imaging and monitoring of discrete particles such as cells or bacteria, there is a much better way of imaging that relies on detection of their shadow signatures. Technically, the shadow of a micro-object can be thought as a hologram that is based on interference of diffracted beams interacting with each cell. Quite contrary to the dark shadows that we are used to seeing in the macro-world (such as our own shadow on the wall), micro-scale shadows (or transmission holograms) contain an extremely rich source of quantified information regarding the spatial features of the micro-object of interest.

By making use of this new way of thinking, unlike conventional lens based imaging approaches, LUCAS does not utilize any lenses, microscope-objectives or other bulk optical components, and it can immediately monitor an ultra-large field of view by detecting the holographic shadow of cells or bacteria of interest on a chip. The holographic diffraction pattern of each cell, when imaged under special conditions, is extremely rich in terms of spatial information related to the state of the cell or bacteria. Through advanced signal processing tools that are running at a central computer station, the unique texture of these cell/bacteria holograms will enable highly specific and accurate medical diagnostics to be performed even in resource poor settings by utilizing the existing wireless networks.

Project Site: http://innovate.ee.ucla.edu

CellScope

Bioengineering Department, University of California at Berkeley;
Dr. Daniel Fletcher, Dr. Erik Douglas, Dr. Wilbur Lam, Neil Switz, Robi Maamari, David Breslauer

The CellScope project aims to address disease diagnosis and treatment challenges in developing countries by enabling clinical microscopy and wireless communication of healthcare information in the field. By clipping a compact optical microscope onto a camera-enabled cellular phone, we are creating a mobile microscopy system that increases the capabilities of healthcare workers as well as the speed and reach of healthcare delivery.

Much of the developing world is ravaged by infectious disease, and local infrastructure is often absent or crumbling. Optical microscopy is the diagnostic gold standard for many of these diseases, but the necessary equipment and trained personnel are often not available in a resource-limited setting. However, the presence of reliable cellular communication in these places presents a tremendous opportunity for healthcare delivery and can serve as the platform for an affordable and reliable method to diagnose patients in remote areas.

We are developing a system for cell phone microscopy, called the CellScope, capable of on-site disease diagnosis and wireless transmission of patient data to clinical centers for further evaluation, treatment recommendations, patient management, and epidemiological studies. Our device extends the concept of telemedicine to diagnostic microscopy using commercially-available camera-enabled cellular phones. The CellScope takes advantage of the robust cellular network in the developing world and the well-established and trusted technology of optical imaging to meet the tremendous demand for portable infectious disease diagnosis. Carried by local health workers, this mobile and inexpensive technology will make high-quality microscopy widely accessible, improving patient care and relieving the burden on under-resourced regional clinics. Vodafone Americas Foundation™ support will enable development and deployment of field-ready prototypes for use in evaluating device effectiveness for malaria and tuberculosis diagnosis and monitoring.

Project Sites: http://fletchlab.berkeley.edu/research_cellscope.htm
http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/telemicroscopy-disease-diagnosis

Business Trip

Below was the route that I have taken last week for my business trip:

KLIA ---> Beijing Capital Airport ---> Shenzhen Airport --- 3 days -----> Taoyuan Airport ---- 2 days ----> Kota Kinabalu Airport ----> KLIA

Around 24 hours on flight.

Omurice in Hokkyokusei

Western style fried rice with omelet or "Nasi Pataya" in Japanese style restaurant. Delicious!

Takoyaki

Tokoyaki in Osaka is delicious!

Oops, I finished them before taking the photos.....

Okonomiyaki

Osaka Taste

Tokyo Taste

Hiroshima Taste

You will find soba in the Okonomiyaki from Hiroshima and not the Okonomiyaki from Osaka. The toyko one is in liquid form and not as delicous as the one that you can find in Osaka and Hiroshima. Anyway, you should try out all if you do have opportunities to do so!

Mobile Phone in Japan

Mobile phones is quite common in Japan, even students in primary school carry the mobile phone. However, I observed that in the train or subway, using your mobile phone for conversation is considered rude. Near the priority seats, the passengers are advised to switch off their phones. During the journey from Osaka to Kanazawa, the Thunderbird Limited Express has one room (near to toilet) specified for passengers to use their mobile phone. So, it seems that Japanese still consider talking to others in the train or subway is not a good behavior.

Sticky Ice Cream in Arashiyama

This looks interesting. After making the ice cream, the shop owner immediately turned the ice cream cone upside down and said to me “you can do this!” I did the same and then my wife took the picture.

QR Code in Japan

I am quite impressed on how Japan has used QR code for advertising and information sharing. I have seen the QR code in the "one-day pass" in Kyoto which is linked to the timetables of the city loop bus. QR code can be found everywhere, such as magazines, shopping malls, railway and etc. Peoples there are using their mobile phones with camera to read the QR code and then be linked to certain web-site. It seems that Japanese is really good in adapting the technologies to their daily life.

Here, you can purchase "Flower Muji Mobile" using your mobile phone.

I just found out that even my passport now has the QR code. The immigration official in Kansai airport put the sticker with QR code in it.

Travel in Japan

Easy and comfortable if you can sort out the way of using the railway, subway, bus (all the public transportation). Of course, you can travel from one place to another using the shinkansen (the fast train connecting city to city). Thanks to my wife who did a lot of homework before. Now, we are in Osaka.

In Kenroku-en Garden, Kanazawa

Tokyo Tower

Heading to Kodaiji Temple in Nara

In Kinmata, Kyoto

Miyajima - Hiroshima

We have landed ourselves in Miyajima, Hiroshima.

Kansai Airport

See what's the broadband speed in Kansai Airport.

WiMAX coverage at Home

It seems that my home is under WiMAX coverage from two operators:

[NSP-Name] [NSP-ID] [RSSI] [CINR]
Unknown 000023 -68 24
Unknown 000012 -97 13

Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd
Asiaspace WiMAX Sdn. Bhd.