Malaysian man pays US$54,300 for car license plate..

Jeez, can anybody get even more stupid? $54k for a licence plate? Why? Why? Why? Well actually a lot are even more stupid than this. In the UAE were I used to the live, the goverment used to hold auctions on licence plates, and people would buy. The only difference there is that the licence plates have only numbers on them, not letters, and they have different colors. For example, the red licence plate was the first color to come out, so a number like '123' would easily go over $54k, it might even reach $1,000,000. I have read in the papers there of prices going up to $1,000,000 for one stupid number. Some people in the world just have too much money and cant wait to find ways to spend it ridiculously. If it was cheaper for example, it wouldnt be as stupid, but spending thousands or even hundreds of thousands on dollars on a licence plate..is just extremely idiotic.

Its just like a cell phone number, some people (such as myself) got to choose the last 4 digits, for example my last 4 digits spell NAEL (6235). I did not have to pay anything for that. If I did have to pay something, I wouldnt go over $10. Who gives a shit what your numbe looks like anyway. Most people store them in their cell phones and never have to see the number ever again...as for the car, having an easy to remember licence plate such as 'TAN' (like in the article) or '1234' like in the UAE just makes it easier for the cops to remember your licence plate. Oh right I forgot in the UAE the licence plate number is directly proportional to your 'royalness'. The nicer your number the better the connections you have in the goverment and royal family. So '1234' might be the cousin of president (who doesnt even have a number on his plates, just a golden eagle)

FUBAR

Tired beyond belief

I think today can go down in my book of tiring days as the most tiring day ever. It started out with the gym this afternoon, then some jogging, followed by a game of squash (you might be thinking 'wow Nael seems pretty active' but mind you the last time I did any activity of half this magnitude was 2 months ago) then taking out some empty boxes that were lying around in my appartment, and tidying up the place, moving some furniture around to put the dining table where it should be but it wasnt because the boxes were taking its place and then reading two chapters from a book my professor selected for me to present a lecture on next week.
(Man Ms Judith (my highschool english teacher) wont be impressed at all with that last 6 line sentence...)
It took me a good 3 hours to read one chapter and prepare some notes on it, I still have another one, plus making some slides. Its not that bad, but it takes so much time and I was already tired and the best part of it all is that I have to teach for an hr next week! Crazzy!

Plus I will probably have a pile of work to do for my job which I excused myself from all last week since I had a crazy ass midterm to study for which could not have went worse than it did on Friday. I can't be more sure that I did horrible on it..my first grad school midterm down the drain (20% of my grade) Ill be lucky if I pass it..plus it was multiple choice too and who needs me to explain to them how my luck works with multiple choice exams..especially when math is involved..it cant get worse than that, a math multiple choice exams where the wrong answers you might come up with show up in the option list just so you can get slightly excited about the fact that after all the calculations you did your answer is on the list then to get rudely surprised with a big red 'X' right through your answer! (The part about the excitement wont happen in this midterm since I guessed a lot of the answers..I wish they were educated, a few of them were wild roullete guesses)

Anyway enough ranting, Im off to bed. Oh while messing around on Facebook I found away to import my blog into my notes there..Pretty cool since I was thinking today why doesnt Facebook have a blog..but I guess 'my notes' is 'my blog' in facebook terms.

First attempt at Autodeskin' it!

I am taking a graduate level Mechanical Engineering course for my Masters degree. Its a 3D Surface Modelling course. A program called AutoDesk Inventor is used to build 3d objects from 2d drawings. I started playing around with it today to figure out how things work in it. The final result is the following drawing:



Hmm..this would look neat on my desk at home..or even in my office (aka a cubicle)

Google your computer

Since I formatted my computer last week I had to reinstall a lot of the software I initially had. I was downloading Google Earth since I like just playing around with it once in a while, and I came across Google Desktop. It brings Google search to your desktop and allows you to search for files on your machine very quickly and efficiently. It has several nice features since you can add several gadgets suchs as weather, news, etc. I took them all off since itll probably just slow down my computer, plus I dont need all these things all the time.

By default the Google Desktops bar will appear on the right of the screen, but it took too much space so I just moved it down to the bottom in the taskbar and then made it more compact by removing all the other unecessary features like the weather.



I also installed a neat virtual desktop called MSVDM and thats what you see in that image next to Google Desktop. This gives you 4 virtual desktops to organize your work on. I am a fan of multiple desktops and alway use it on my Apple laptop and it just makes working on several things less chaotic. For example on one desktop you can have your favorite email program open, and on the next desktop your assignment work, while on the third you have some reference website for your assignment. Switch between desktops by clicking on the desktop number and everything assigned to that desktop will appear while the rest is minimized. That is why it is called virtual, as its really not 4 desktops, but it just behaves as if there were 4.

Where did my summer go?

So summer is officially over now, and its back to school for thousands of students including one new grad student by the name of Nael..yup thats me, I started my studies yesterday, but I had no classes yet. Neither did I have classes today, but everything should kick into 4th gear next week.

I managed to get myself my old undergrad job at UTS again, so Im an SSC again for the 3rd year in a row. Lots of things changed in the labs, mainly BSB and Mills this year. The new labs use ID cards to open after hours, and the best part these new labs open on their own in the morning and close alone at night. Apparently all the labs will be fitted for this which is great! Even better, instructor's id cards can be programmed to open the labs as well, so if an instructor needs the lab open early, they can go ahead and do it themselves!

I met with my supervisor, Dr. Christopher Anand two days ago and talked about my project somewhere. Although I spoke with one of the other grad students, he gave me a better picture of what I am required to do for this project. They are having some visual problems with the software, and the way somethings are drawn and thats where I am to start the project and get familiar with the code base.

M. Eng in 7 days

My final week of my summer is about to start. Next week this time I would have finnished my first day of classes in the Masters of Computational Engineering program - if I have any classess that day. I have to take 7 courses during the program to graduate with this degree and I should be all done by Dec 2007. The plan is to take 3 courses now, another three next term and one more course in my final term. Ill be working on my project during this time as well.

I already talked to my professor and Ill be working on a way to optimize MRI magnetic coils and their placement around an object. I should be visiting St. Jose Hospital in Hamilton to see this MRI in action. I think I made a good decision to pursue this, its an excellent field and I should hopefully find a good job next year.

Windows XP on Apple Power PC? Why??

Although I prefer Mac OS, Windows still has some advantages...one actually. There are a few applications I use that are only available for Windows. For example, I play this web based online game called Utopia. You can download a calculator to help you do some calculations that can help you make decisions in the game. Unfortunately this calculator is only available for Windows and the developer does not want to port it to Mac OS for whatever reasons he has so I need to use Windows for that. I have another laptop with Windows but this weekend my friend's cat decided to chew the power cable and now the laptop cannot charge its battery. So I spent the weekend looking for a Windows emulator for Mac OS that is FREE. I came across something called Q and it looks like it works, but its really slow. Heres a screenshot of Windows XP on Mac OS:


Strange? Yup it looks strange!