I know that my homework is easier than anyone else in my group (dokter pembimbing yang dua-duanya baik, pasien udah dapet, bahan udah ada), but somehow I just don’t know where to start. I CAN’T compile all the sources to create a good, responsible and easy-to-understand paper. Not to mention that reading all the sources already consumed my precious sleep time, and to make it worse, I can’t talk with my patient since he’s still in ICU and those ICU nurses keep shouting, “Mbak koas mo ngapain? Nyari siapa? Ntar aja deh! Jangan sekarang! *hus hus hus*” Whatever.

Well, I know I’ll waste more time if I keep bragging like this.. hahaha.

Anyway, this is a list of links to download some medical ebooks:

http://medical-ebooks.blogspot.com

http://medicalzone.org - Indonesian medical forum, you have to register first to download the ebooks.

http://medicalbooks4everyone.blogspot.com

http://koobe.eu

Unfortunately, some of the links on these websites are broken. And I can’t find any new edition of Sabiston and Zollinger Surgery ebooks *sobs*

In this past 3 weeks, I learn new things from my internship:

1. Ways to deal with place and people you don’t like.

2. People can actually sleep with their eyes widely opened. Bahkan sambil nulis pun bisa!

3. People can work for around 40 hours without sleep, and they can stay healthy and fresh.

4. Ada beberapa orang yang sifatnya emang nyolot. I mean, bener-bener nyolot.

Anyway, saya agak bingung mau nulis apa, rasanya kayak baru pertama kali nge-blog aja.. hahaha.

Dua minggu lagi saya udah musti memulai kehidupan ko-as yang diawali dengan… *JENG JENG* Bedah Fatma! Huaaa… Banyak kabar burung yang ‘mengerikan’ soal siklus satu ini.. Hahaha.. Tapi yah mau ditempatin di mana aja harus nrimo deh

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

My lecturer told me that many SCA victims could survive if they were treated in a timely, effective manner. She always reminded us that quick and proper actions (like the one mentioned in the guidelines) could save a life that’s almost at its end.

And so I closed my novel and then I decided to refresh my mind about this disease. Yeah, I know I wasted my time doing some leisure activities and only study a little bit. Well, I think I miss my lectures Hahaha. I re-read some textbooks and then I try to find some supplements for my study about cardiac arrest from the internet.

I found lots of resources about cardiac arrest, and one of them is InsideCardiacArrest.com. The website, presented by St. Jude Medical, provides general educational information about the risk factors (i.e coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, etc.), warning signs, and treatment of Sudden Cardiac Arrest. The site offers two videos: Sudden Cardiac Arrest and The Human Heart. They also have a patients’ stories page who suffered from SCA.

Because the site is not made exclusively for physicians/nurses/paramedical personnels only, the videos and all of the information are explained in simple, easy to understand language, so everyone can read it. And if you don’t understand some of the medical words, don’t worry because they have a very helpful Glossary Terms page. They also have a Risk Assessment (in PDF format) to raise awareness of factors that contribute to your cardiac health.

So if you feel like you’re at risk for SCA or if you want to know more about SCA, you can visit InsideCardiacArrest.com for more information.

Brought to you by InsideCardiacArrest.com and PayPerPost.com

Hmm.. iya ya.. ngga ngapa-ngapain. Padahal malem minggu. Temen-temen pada sibuk kerja, di rumah cuma ada dua orang, tambatan hati tidak ada.. siapa coba yang ngga jadi melankolis di tengah malem gini.

Bener-bener ngga ide deh mo tulis apaan. Mmm. gimana kalo idenya itu “ngga ada ide” aja? Jadi ngga perlu mikir yang ribet-ribet.

Kadang-kadang mo post blog itu dipikirin dulu biar postingannya bagus dan layak dilempar ke masyarakat internet. Tapi pasti ada kalanya juga lagi kosong tapi pengen nulis sesuatu. Yaa.. jadinya kayak gini nih.. ngoceh ngalor ngidul ngga jelas. Aneh juga sih, serasa monolog gini.

Kalo dipikir-pikir, emang saya ini bener-bener kosong. Kerjaan kosong, duit kosong, asmara kosong, rumah kosong.. apa lagi ya yang kosong.. otak juga lama-lama kosong kalo kelamaan liburan n kebanyakan ngoceh ngawur kayak gini

Uda ah.. lama-lama jadi gila ntar.. ngomong-ngomong ndiri ngga jelas kok bisa sampe panjang gini hahaha..

Title: Death Note: Another Note – The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases
Author: NISIOISIN
Pages: 176
Original Concept by: Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata
Translated by: Andrew Cunningham
English Version Publisher: Viz Media
Price: Rp. 205.000,- / $17.99 USA / $21.99 CAN / £9.99 UK

Yesterday I went to Kinokuniya bookstore in Grand Indonesia, Jakarta. I was shocked when I saw this Death Note: Another Note – The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases novel in the middle of some non-manga fictions. As a big fan of Death Note manga/anime (and a rabid fangirl of L, *lulz*), of course I bought this novel immediately.

I’m really happy to know that Viz translated this book into English (I don’t understand japanese ). This mystery/thriller novel’s is a must read if you claimed yourself a hardcore Death Note fan. And I think you could still enjoy the story even if you’re not a manga/anime fan and haven’t heard anything about Death Note in your life.

So what’s so special about this novel?

No no no.. it’s not a novel-version of the Death Note manga, but this is a brand new story (a prequel of Death Note manga, actually.) about L & Naomi Misora. In other words, it’s a spin-off of the successful Death Note manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. The timeline is before the events on Death Note manga. Returning characters are L, Naomi Misora and Raye Penber.

And here’s a piece of information about the author, NISIOISIN:

Born in 1981, NISIOISIN made his writing debut in 2002, winning the 23rd Mephisto Prize in 2002 for Kubikiri Cycle (The Beheading Cycle). This eventually became the first book in his best-selling Zaregoto series. His subsequent novels have earned him a passionate following throughout Japan.

I don’t want to create any personal review about the story yet. Well I’m still on Chapter 2 But if you ask Google, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of plot information about this novel. Anyway, this is the summary, written on the flip cover:

There’s a serial killer loose in Los Angeles and the local authorities need help fast. For some reason the killer has been leaving a string of maddeningly arcane clues at each crime scene. Each of these clues, it seems, is an indecipherable roadmap to the next murder.

Onto the scene comes L, the mysterious super-sleuth. Despite his peculiar working habits- he’s never shown his face in public, for example-he’s the most decorated detective in the world and has never tackled a case he hasn’t been able to crack.

But this time he needs help.

Enlisting the services of an FBI agent named Naomi Misora, L starts snooping around the City of Angels. It soon becomes apparent that the killing spree is a psychotic riddle designed specifically to engage L in a battle of wits. Stuck in the middle between killer and investigator, it’s up to Misora to navigate both the dead bodies and the egos to solve the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

Another cool thing about this novel is the packaging. I love the cover so much; it’s like a simple, normal mystery/thriller novel. Thank God they didn’t put some edgy, anime-ish Death Note artwork for the cover! I think it’ll destroy the overall look and feel for yes-it’s-a-novel-not-manga concept. But if you’re really a big fan of Obata-sensei’s artwork, don’t worry, there’s a very cool artwork of L-Naomi Misora in the front pages. Obata-sensei also put his adorable artworks at the beginning of each chapter.

Well, I bought this novel from local bookstore, but I think you could find one here on Amazon.com. I wonder if the (free) e-book version already available.. hahaha.

This time I would like to talk about PayPerPost. Eh? You guys already know about them? Good. As we already know, PayPerPost is a very popular paid-to-review company and there are so many opinions (pros and cons) about them.

So, what makes me want to join PayPerPost? Well, I heard that this company has a credible payment system. And then I said to myself: “Well, let’s give it a shot.” So I clicked on the website, and I’m pretty amazed because they have a wonderful, user-friendly interface and payperpost has many cool features too. And also the sign-up process is not hard at all.

And so I waited for my blog’s approval. 6 days later, I received an e-mail telling me that my blog has been approved by PayPerPost. Wow. I didn’t expect that they approved my blog on my first attempt at PayPerPost’s blog submission! Well, I noticed that many people say it’s quite hard to get your blog approved by the PayPerPost team. Hoo… I’m flattered.

The next thing to do is of course finding some opportunities. I found many interesting ads, but since I only have 6 hours to complete my review after I reserved the opportunity, I have to be very selective and try so hard to stop the greedy-me that keeps shouting “Hey! I think it’s a good ad!” and “Whoa. This is cool. Review it.” Or “Wow! Look at this! I know you like it, Mel.” Hahaha. Yup, PayPerPost have so many opportunities! They’ll pay you for around $5.00-$75.00 per review. They also highlighted the opportunities: Red (the opportunity is not available for you), Gray (the opportunity is available to you, but all posts fully reserved), Green (featured opportunity is available to you) and White (the opportunity is available to you). The “Qualified Opportunities” button is really helpful to sort opportunities that are qualified for your blog.

My only problem about PayPerPost is the FAQ page. I have to look in every corner of the website to find the answer of my questions. Well, the FAQ is written under the “Terms of Service” and “Contact Support” links. And I also a little bit confused with the term ‘Reserve This Opportunity’. I thought that I can view my reserved opportunities on a particular page in my dashboard, but I don’t know how to do it (I’m still a newbie after all). Or maybe there’s no such option at all.

I think PayPerPost is a good paid reviews company. In short, they have lots of opportunities/ads, great interface and they also asked you to put the disclosure image at the end of the review.

If you’re interested, you are most welcomed to join PayPerPost!

Before I started joining those paid-to-review companies; I created my own personal “Terms and Conditions”. Why? So I can write a review that is relevant with my blog and interesting enough to be written here. This is a personal blog, and I only write about things that caught my interest and stuff that is good enough to share with everyone.

So yeah, this is my personal “Terms and Conditions”:

I will not pick ads that are beyond my ability to review.

Think about reviewing some health ad that provides some services for major brain cancer surgery, or some medications for Crohn’s Disease. Or ads like cheap airplane tickets, credit cards, business loans, SEO e-book and stuff. I never had any experience with similar products, I have no reliable sources, I don’t have enough accurate information, I don’t know how to contact the customer support and the most horrible part is the website itself is not even user-friendly and provides enough data. To make it worse, the company’s location is not even in the same continent with my country!

To advertise products like these, products that I don’t even understand… it doesn’t seem right for me. It’s just so irresponsible to give positive reviews (I’m aware that some advertisers want us bloggers to give them positive comments, not the brutal truth for their own feedback) while I myself didn’t quite sure about the products I reviewed. Think about it. Recommending something for your blog readers about things you don’t understand, things that didn’t drive you to at least make a little research about the ads. I’m talking about responsibility and honesty here.

I only pick ad that’s relevant with my interests.

If I’m not interested with the ads, I won’t sweat myself to create a review about it. Why? It’s not fun. Since pay-to-review companies give the bloggers freedom to choose their own ads -to-review (and also whether you want to write a review or not is not quite a big deal for them), it is not my duty to post every type of paid reviews. I write paid reviews just because I LIKE it and I WANT to do it, not because I HAVE to do it. That’s why I love their slogan, “Review all the things you like, and get paid!”

I love visiting lots of sites, I love browsing through online shops and catalogs, clicking interesting ads (OMG the spywares!), I even love to buy things from the internet! If I found some ads that is relevant enough with my interests and, well, interesting enough to be mentioned on my blog, of course I’ll place a bid ASAP and wait patiently.. hoping that the advertiser will approve my bid

Maybe a lot of people think that I’m too picky about the ads. But don’t forget, the paid-to-review companies and advertisers are very selective too. We have to wait for a long time until our blog/review/bid approved by them. Sometimes they rejected our treasure a.k.a blog, our brain (for calculating the profit) a.k.a bid and our hardwork a.k.a reviews (with their ads already posted on our blog :(). I know the process is not complicated, but actually it’s not that “easy” to earn money through paid reviews program. There are many simple methods to earn money, but I don’t think that money is that easy to get.

About that famous “Disclosure”, it’ll be much better for me to write a review if the advertisers asked me to mention that my post is a paid review, or at least it won’t hurt them if I put some “this-is-a-paid-review” words. Why? Well, I also create reviews about some websites and products for free, simply because I like their site/products. And I don’t want to give any impressions to anyone who read this blog that every posts and reviews I made are all paid-to-review posts.

I know I may sound too idealist for some people. Or maybe naive. Maybe you’ll ask: why bother if you can write reviews for all the ads? Well, this is a personal blog, a place where I can express my opinions, hobbies and interests freely, and I want this blog to remain this way. I am not planning to change this blog into a full-time commercial blog. I don’t want to lie and then become an irresponsible person just to post some paid reviews about irrelevant and uninteresting ads. I don’t want to recommend any products/sites that I am not familiar with.

And next, about Pagerank. I don’t give much attention to it. Why? Because I don’t understand the math and I don’t know how it works and like hell I know the exact way to increase it. Some people said that a blog must have a high Pagerank in order to be approved by the paid-to-review companies and Pagerank also increases the review payment. But my site’s already approved by many paid-to-review companies and AFAIK, ads with high prices are ads like credit card, SEO stuff, insurance, loans, etc. Well, I’m not really into that stuff. Anyway, I guess I must ask Uncle Google about this Pagerank thing.

For me, paid-to-review program itself isn’t the real problem. The idea about this business isn’t bad, either. We all try to make some money with our own unique ways here. And paid reviews program is one great opportunity worth to try. The main problem is the attitude of some irresponsible and dishonest bloggers who’s trying to create paid reviews even though they know that some of the ads they’re going to review are like untouchable alien brands from a galaxy million miles away.

Well yes, I’ve seen some blogs with nice, high quality paid reviews and relevant ads. I’m sure if you have enough enthusiasm with the product, you will write your own natural opinion about it. I bet the advertiser will like it and give you money for your review. I’d love to see blogs with relevant and good paid reviews because I think they deserve some dollars for creating such a good posts. I hope I can see more blogs like this. Well, isn’t it weird if you stumbled upon a blog that mainly talks about education, but somehow on the same page you also found poorly-written reviews about casino or poker and some brand new software about architectural design? No wonder many people commented on that particular post and saying things like “By reading this post, I assumed this is a paid review. I think that you are not really interested with the product/site itself, why are you saying XXXX about XYZ? I created similar products before and I’m sure that XXXX should be YYYY” or “OMG puh-lease, diz is a paid review, isn’t it? Hell yeah it is! *lulz* I bet u dunno anythin’ about ur own post. Har har har!”

Anyway, my post here is just my opinion about paid reviews, because recently I’ve seen a lot of people are complaining about this program. I really hope that people can notice the difference between the good quality paid reviews blog with the low quality one before they judge that all blogs with paid reviews are just the same plain business blog, money-oriented people, liars, OMGYEAHMUNNYROXORZZ!, irresponsible, yadda yadda. I’m sure that blog with low quality paid reviews won’t get much profit and the readers will easily get bored, thinking that “Oh. This is just another ‘full time’ paid reviews blog”. On the other hand, I believe that by creating good paid reviews (and of course by selecting nice and interesting ads) won’t drive the blog readers away. In turn, they might be giving you some thanks for reviewing cool products/sites. Plus, you get money from the advertiser: D

I know maybe people will think that as a newbie in this paid reviews business, I’m such a Ms. Know-It-All-About-Paid-Reviews. But that’s fine with me. This is just my 2 cents. I’m sure other people have their own thoughts about this program, and I respect their opinions. I also realized that many people are trying to make much profit from this paid-to-review program. I’m sure they have their own reasons; I know their objectives are different from mine, and once again, I respected them.

Wow. I guess I’ve talked too much. And please excuse my grammar

Well, I hope this entry didn’t scare the advertisers away and the paid-to-review companies didn’t banned my account for this post

So I think I will reinstall my good ol’ Mozilla Firefox 2 and then I’ll wait for the Download Day to reinstall Mozilla Firefox 3

Anyway, these are the Add-ons I can’t live without (I think I’ll add more Add-ons next time :P):

Adblock Plus
Blocking ads.

ColorfulTabs*
This cute add-on colors every tab in my browser! It’s really nice to see them marching like a rainbow troops. LOL.

Cooliris Previews*
Preview websites without clicking or leaving your current page.

Copy Plain Text*
Copies text without formatting.

Download Statusbar
View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar. No more annoying download pop-ups.

Download Helper
Download videos and images.

DownThemAll!
The mass downloader for Firefox.

Edit Middle 2**
Show AwesomeBar results when editing in the middle (not just at the end).

Endangered Species Toolbar
A nice toolbar.

Fasterfox*
Performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

Fierr
Replaces the error page (server not found, etc.) with a super cool fox picture.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
Synchronize your bookmarks across machines.

FoxyTunes*
Controls any media player (iTunes, Windows Media Player) from your Firefox.

Get File*
Get a file from an URL.

goo Green Label*
This toolbar makes my Firefox becomes green. Sweet.

Google Notebook
Allows notetaking while browsing.

MeasureIt*
Draw a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a website. Great for creating layout designs/themes/templates.

PDF Download
This Add-ons will stop my Firefox from crashing each time I clicked on PDF-file links.

PeraPera-kun*
Popup Japanese dictionary. Really helpful.

PicLens*
A cool way to view images on Firefox.

Rikaichan
Popup Japanese dictionary.

ScrapBook
A better version of Bookmarks.

Screen grab!*
Screenshot! Great way to substitute the old-fashioned printscreen method.

ScribeFire
Write a post for your blog directly from Firefox.

SearchStatus
Displays the Google PageRank and Alexa ranking.

Stylish
Customizing the looks of other websites. It’s FUN.

Tab Mix Plus*
Tab browsing with an added boost.

Taboo
Tabs! Tabs!!

Veoh Browser Plug-in
Add videos to the Veoh Player.

VeriSign’s OpenID SeatBelt*
Add-on for my OpenID in VeriSign.

Web Developer
Toolbar with cool web developer tools.

Zotero*
Powerful add-on for managing and collecting research from the Internet. You can even access all your saved contents offline.

* Incompatible with Mozilla Firefox 3
** Only compatible with Mozilla Firefox 3

I really hope the developer will update their Add-ons ASAP.

So I did a little research here and there, reading a few opinions from other bloggers about paid-to-review sites, and then finally I found some good, non-scam paid-to-review companies. Bloggerwave is one of them. They will pay you $10 if you created a post about one of their ads, and you only need to write a review in 50 words!

Bloggerwave is one of the best ways to start making money with your blog.