Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Author: akshay

  • 3rd year

    Community medicine  department became the first to suggest reading a textbook that was written for a different subject when the HoD asked us to read Harrison’s, Davidson’s and Hutchinson’s , McLeod’s instead of community medicine textbooks like Park.

    He also suggested one important thing – to stop getting involved in college activities, politics, etc and to start pouring in hours after hours reading those standard textbooks and others. Genuine. Why should students be spending any time doing things that are not useful for them, but probably harmful, in the long run?

    Thus, my resolutions to disregard anything that isn’t directly related to my career henceforth, got some cementing.

    He also said of the need to stop depending on parents. And that gave me some more reasons why I should start earning some bucks on my own.

    Technically, I’m motivated.

  • How To Never Lose Your Contacts or Data on Your Smartphone

    This post will tell you everything you need to know about:

    1. Having to never lose any of your contacts
    2. Having to never lose any of your chats/messages/whatsapp conversations, etc.

    Required: An android phone (though the concepts presented in this post will apply to other smartphones like iPhone, and Blackberry too)

    What you need to know
    Your smartphone has two kinds of memory – the system memory (the internal memory) and the user memory (SD card, external storage)

    Memory Consisting Analogy What it means Things stored
    Internal Phone memory Brain When your phone dies, the memories die too Contacts, accounts, settings, application data
    External SD Card Notebook The memories are not tied to your phone, they can travel from phone to phone, state to state Images, videos, application backups

    So what?
    So, when you inadvertently burn your phone’s motherboard, or decide to format your phone, you’ll lose everything on the internal memory and nothing on the SD card. *

    How to utilize this knowledge and save your ass
    Now that we know what kind of memory is vulnerable to being lost, we can think of backing up things stored on it – contacts, accounts, settings, application data, etc.

    There are two places you can back your data up at:

    1. SD card
    2. Cloud (that is servers of google, apple, etc)

    Contacts
    Easy way: When adding a new contact, an often neglected option asks you “Create contact in: Google Account, Phone, or SIM?”

    If you choose “Google” as the answer to the above (instead of “Phone”), you’re done. Over. That contact will be synced to your google account the next time you’re connected to internet, and voila! You’ll never lose it.

    Note: Contrary to what some people think, choosing that the contact be saved in Google doesn’t mean that the contact won’t show up on your phone. A Google contact acts just like a phone contact, only that it will also be synced to the google server.

    What about existing contacts on phone?
    Moving the contacts you’ve already saved to your phone from your phone to Google is also going to be a piece of cake.

    See if in your Contacts –> Menu or Contacts –> Menu –> Settings there is an option meaning “Move contacts”. If it exists,
    Step 1: simply click “from: phone” and “to: google”.

    Most phones I’ve come across does not have the above “move” option. For these, we’re going to take a scary approach.
    Step 1: Contacts –> Menu –> Export Contacts
    Choose “phone” and it will save all your phone contacts to your SD card.
    Step 2: Contacts –> Menu –> Export Contacts
    Choose “sim” if you also have some contacts on your sim card.
    Step 3: (Scary step) Contacts –> Menu –> Delete all contacts! (Don’t worry, we have exported all your contacts to SD card in step 1 & 2)
    Step 4: Contacts –> Menu –> Import Contacts
    Choose “Google account” when you’re prompted where to import contacts to.

    Alternate way
    If you do not ever connect to internet, an alternate way to back up your contacts is to follow steps 1 and 2 above, and then step 4 when you need to restore your contacts. The disadvantage of this approach is that this is manual.

    Alternate way with software download
    Just download Contact Backup apps and these will do the above alternative automatically.

    SMS Messages
    The SMSes are unfortunately never backed up to the cloud by default. If you still use SMS for communication after all the TRAI regulations, I have the following app recommendation

    SMS Backup+
    It is free, and it works charmingly well, backing up all your SMS conversations to gmail thus allowing you to use gmail’s search to search even your SMS conversations.
    Advantages:

    • Backs up SMS, Call Log, and even Whatsapp conversations (excluding group messages)
    • Backs these up to GMail!
    • Free!

    Whatsapp Conversations
    Whatsapp has a built-in backup feature. By default it is on, and runs at 4 AM every day. It creates a backup of all your chats to the “Whatsapp” folder of your SD card. You can also trigger a manual backup, in case you know you’re going to break your phone.

    To-do:

    • Never “Delete and exit group”
    • Never “Clear all conversations”

    Restoring data after crash:

    • After you install whatsapp again, it automatically detects the backup inside “Whatsapp” folder on your phone’s SD card, and offers to restore conversations for you.
    • Do NOT choose to continue without restoring. Once you do this, you’ll potentially fork your message history thus leaving you with no chance to have a “total” history of your whatsapp messages.

    Advanced restore: (If you buy a new phone or something)

    •  In your new phone, and new SD card, there’s no “Whatsapp” folder. So, when whatsapp runs it won’t detect the backup (because there is no backup)
    • Just copy the “Whatsapp” folder and paste it in your SD card BEFORE installing whatsapp. Now, whatsapp automatically detects your backup and restores messages from it.

    PRO-TIP:
    The whatsapp backup file is saved in your SD card. So, if you lose your phone, and lose the SD card along with it, you could end up losing whatsapp backups too. But there’s a way to sync those backups to the cloud. Checkout Dropsync, or Auto Backup for Whatsapp
     
    Settings
    In newer android phones, there is a setting “backup & restore” that allows backup of all settings. But otherwise you’ll need different apps. Just search “backup settings” in play store.

    Other apps
    The way android is structured, the data of apps cannot be accessed by other apps (unless you’re rooted). So, if the app (whose data you’re trying to backup) doesn’t have a backup option, you are out of luck. (If you’re really into it, you can root your phone. Although this might lead to countless sleepless nights)

    *Some phones have an external storage that is built-in, or comes with the phone. I haven’t played around with this a lot, but chances are that this acts like an SD card.

  • Pathology Practical Examination

    After revision on 4th (coming back from a quick visit to home) and 2 days of not studying anything related to pathology, today on 7th I took the Pathology practical exam.

    As usual, it started with the spotters. I remember fatty liver, and peptic ulcer; WBC Pipette, bone marrow aspiration needle, Wilm’s tumor, CLL. And the rest of the histopathology slides were too confusing – what I thought emphysema was probably CVC lung, and I don’t even remember if I wrote the others right.

    Then, I got to sit down at my chair where a chart, a peripheral smear, a discussion slide and a urine sample was waiting.

    Peripheral smear was probably dimorphic anemia. I got really confused till I adjusted the condenser for the high power. (Always remember. High power, high condenser). Nevertheless I was asked the causes of eosinophilia, microcytic anemia, macrocytic anemia.

    Urine – my question was a sore-throat kid with burning micturition. Proteins present, Blood absent. Had to explain how phosphate coagulum gets dissolved in acetic acid, while protein doesn’t. Messed up by pouring nitric acid over urine in Heller’s test, instead of adding urine to nitric acid.

    (I remember the other side were being asked reducing sugar (diabetic neuritis), and ketone bodies)

    The discussion slide I got was that of a 56 year old man with burning micturition. BPH was an easy find, but I didn’t know about the serum markers of Prostatic cancer (which I answered in the evening – Prostate Specific Antigen, and Prostatic Acid Phosphate) or about the grading PIN-1,PIN-2.

    The chart was of CSF examination with cobweb formation, increased protein, presence of lymphocytes. Straightaway TB meningitis. Had to say other inflammatory conditions in the brain.

    With blood grouping, I got my answer paper soiled. The slide was kept right next to my microscope, right above the answer paper. And after I finished answering some other examiner, the slide was nowhere to be seen. 😛 The front page, where “RGUHS” was printed was very nicely coloured red and blue, red and yellow and red and colourless 😀 I almost did the same with the second slide I received too. Put the Rh on the backside of my answer paper. But luckily, by then I had found out that the group was B-ve. Had to tell the examiner about the minor blood grouping systems too.

    With the morning session done, I was too stressed out having a headache, just wanted to sleep. Came back to hostel. Had lunch, and went back to college so that I don’t sleep in my room.

    At 2 o’clock the viva-voce started and it was very quick for everyone.

    First room: Specimens on the table – Fatty liver, squamous cell carcinoma, lobar pneumonia, TB lymph node. But the questions were causes of fatty liver, define shock, types of shock, define necrosis, types of necrosis.

    Second room: Specimens – Osteoclastoma, Polyp intestine, hydronephrosis etc. Questions were PIN (which I forgot earlier), describing osteoclastoma, describing polyp, classifying polyps, cause of hydronephrosis, describing the specimen.

    Third room: Specimens – TB Lung, seminoma, Breast cancer, and so on. Questions – describe TB, describe seminoma, describe breast cancer. The important thing was to describe only what was visible. 😀

    Fourth room: Instruments. Wintrobe’s, Westergren’s. Had to tell the anticoagulant used. Pasteur’s pipette (I never knew it was called that. My “dropper/pipette” answer didn’t work)

    And in about 10 minutes I was finished.

  • Theory Question papers

    Been waiting to upload them all. Pharmacology microbiology forensic medicine. RS3, December 13

  • Crime & Mental illness

  • What I Learned From Deactivating Facebook for 83 days

    That it is not about the social network, it is about me.

    I had just one thing in my mind when I took a break – “focus on studying”.
    I thought facebook was the reason why I could not focus on textbooks, that I would automatically start doing better when I stop using facebook.

    And boy, was I not wrong?

    I started getting distracted by gmail!

    I started to read more of the email subscriptions I have, I started visiting more and more online magazines, reading through them, article after article.

    It only felt counterproductive.

    What was missing?
    Having eliminated what seemed to be the greatest distraction, I was still distracted, and I started wondering why. I decided to observe myself. And the results? Not surprising at all.

    I simply could not read more than a paragraph of my textbook without getting distracted. Either I would start thinking about something in the textbook. Or I would start thinking about my college. Or I would get a great new idea which will change the way world works. Or I desperately want to visit some random website on the internet.

    I simply could not read.

    But why?
    I don’t know.

    I know only one thing. That there is something wrong with my will. I have an obsessive disorder. I am addicted to distractions.

    If all goes right, I will come out of this. I will curb that incessant urge to be in the know about everything. I will learn how to ignore some of the unread notifications. I will learn how to archive some emails without going through them. I will learn how to even check email only in two slots every day.

    But I will still be spending hours to fix tiny errors on my blog template.

    I know. I am crazy.

  • Trapped in a Lucid Dream

    Note to subscribers: Sorry for all the irrelevant question papers I posted. That was just a way of saving them, and gaining some organic hits.

    So, it was pharmacology paper-2 today, and I think I had the longest night in my whole life today. Slept from 2:30 to 5 AM, and that’s all. (I know, it’s not new for some people out there. My friends had slept everywhere from 45 minutes to 5 hours)

    Anyhow, such intense sleep deprivation gave me the amazing chance of experiencing an awesome lucid dream. And read till the end, there’s a surprise. So, here’s how it goes.

    At 2:30 I set my alarm to 6 o’clock, and decided I’ll wake up at 5 o’clock. (I don’t like waking up to alarm. So, I keep the alarm tuned for a later time which I must absolutely get up at, and instruct my body to wake me up before that. I somehow end up waking between 5 & 6)

    And then, I was home all of a sudden. Talking to my dad, watching TV, etc. Suddenly I realize I was dreaming. And here’s what made it different – I couldn’t wake up! I tried pinching myself, but I just couldn’t open my eyes. Like I was stuck. I tried ringing my phone up, so that I’d be woken by the ringtone. But alas! Connectivity trouble inside the dream 😛
    So, I wrote down about this amazing lucid dream, and without wasting time, went on top of my house and jumped down.

    And then I woke up! 😀 I studied for a while, and went to write the examination.

    And then, I actually woke up in my bed, at around 3:30. Still having a long time before 5 o’clock, I went back to sleep.

    So, it was a lucid dream within a normal dream. The first one at my home was the second level dream, because it was really hard to come out of it. I felt like it took half an hour for me to come out of it. And the second one was the first level dream. Inception. Mind f***ed.

  • Pharmacology RGUHS question papers December 2012

    Try solving these

  • Microbiology question paper June 2013 paper 1 RGUHS RS3

  • December 2012 RGUHS RS3 microbiology question paper part 1

    Feel free to download all the images and use them. This is 2012, not tomorrow's paper 😀