ChoJin’s Quarter

Sometimes you encounter a web task that is soooo boring you’d wish you had robot doing it for you. I encountered a few of those during this summer so I figured out it was time to acquire some Web Scraping and Automation Ninja skillz.

Turned out it’s fairly easy, thanks to very useful libraries made for this very same reason. I’m therefore going to give you a quick overview of its simplicity, show you how much you can achieve with only a few lines of code and I’ll conclude this blog post with a real-world script example proving med’ school students should learn programming
Continue reading “Ruby and Web Scraping/Automation”

Couple of years ago I bought a Contoured Kinesis Keyboard due to a carpal tunnel syndrome (or at least my thumb was starting to feel numb on a regular basis).

I can’t tell you, in spite of its very strange look, how wonderful this keyboard is. Not only it solved my pain/sensation issues, but it’s really a very comfortable keyboard. Most people would expect it very hard to get used to it (or switch to normal keyboard afterward), but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. It only took about a week to get used to it, and after 2 weeks I was even typing faster than before. After a month or so, I even decided to switch to dvorak mapping to further deepen the ergonomic experience. Since then (so roughly 6 years now), I’ve been writing with a dvorak mapping on this very same keyboard (maybe I should replace the pads btw…). If you want a great keyboard, I strongly recommend this one.

But 2 years ago or so, two keys started to behave strangely. Not working or getting stuck (the alt/option and command keys on my left thumb). So I opened my keyboard, and the key switches, and quickly realized the best would just be to replace the key switches. Reading from the constructor’s specs I could see they were selling different models/versions with slight dimension variations.

Thus, I emailed Kinesis to ask them for the exact key switch references, figuring I could just replace them myself since the soldering skills involved were not too high ^^ (and my warranty had expired). Someone promptly answered me, asking me whether or not I was sure it was just a key switch issue. And finally, to my surprise, I was astonished couple of days later to receive by mail, free of charge (no cost at all, not even shipping), without even asking for it (I was just asking for the technical references so I could order some from the constructor) three key switches. That is what I would call a great customer service experience

I’m only talking about it now, because it actually took me 2 years to get my motivation together to actually use them and repair my keyboard (I was using a workaround involving hard-pressing the key, or punching it when stuck ). So anyway, prop’ to Kinesis for its great customer service!

Just a small post to remember forever that today was the day I did my first stitches in the OR (in pediatric surgery)

It probably sounds stupid from an outside point of view, and I’ll probably feel the same in a couple of years, but right now I’m just happy I finally got to do it.

Baby steps, baby steps… but it was worth working toward them.

Just a small post to point to an article bunnie [1] wrote about the virus Influenza A : On Influenza A by bunnie.

This article should be of interest for people with a background in computer sciences but little knowledge in biology. It offers some funny/interesting computer sciences comparisons which should be of pedagogic interests for computer savvy people.

By the way, if you like it, I strongly urge you to watch the following video from the 24th CCC Congress:
Programming DNA - A 2-bit language for engineering biology

[1] for those who don’t know, bunnie is an amazing reverse engineer and hardware designer. Among other things, he’s the first hacker who managed to break the XBox’s security, as told in his book “Hacking the XBox”, which is still, up to this day, one of my favorite computer sciences book. I could not emphasize enough about how you really should read it.

Hello,

I think it’s time I go back to basics and post something a little bit technical on this blog, which was the original intent of this blog anyway, should I remind everyone .

So we’re going to talk about magnetic cards. We all have at least half a dozen of them, if not more, and although this technology is probably as old as the dinosaurs, for most people, how to read, how to write and what those cards contain still remain a mystery.

Pretty much everything has already been written about magnetic stripes, I will therefore focus this article on a well-used photocopier card, which has the interesting feature of using a non-standard protocol to prevent from tempering and counterfeiting.

Continue reading “Back to Basics: Reverse Engineering of a Non-Standard Magstripe — Part One”

That’s it, my 2nd year of med’ school just finished, the 3rd year will begin this coming September.

I didn’t have much time during this year to give any updates to those who still cares, so here is a small overview of this past few months:

• I’ve been busy helping the association which mentors first year students
• As said earlier, I indeed implemented a Simple Quiz Recognition Tool (using some morphological mathematics), named… SQRT to process all the first year students’ training exams, compute grades and generate ranking, histograms and so on… It uses C++ and Ruby on Rails, but I’ll tell you more about it later.
• I’ve almost completed my Master in Medical Ethic Research as well (the only thing left is my master thesis oral presentation on June 16th). My Master thesis title is (sorry in french) “Ingénierie, Médecine et Éthique — Introduction aux régulations des appareils médicaux aux États-Unis et en Union Européenne”. If you’re crazy enough to read it, drop me an email and I’ll send you the pdf.
• Of course, I’ve learnt medical stuff, I went to a couple of Hospital for my internships… Which is cool. I still love it, and I don’t regret my decision a bit, but I do miss film making very much along with all my friends still in California as well…
• And the new “me” went to a few crazy med school parties, bars and so on… (sorry I can’t speak about those parties, they are R rated ). New friends coming, old ones gone… Life as bitchy as it can as usual…

Otherwise, nothing much to say. There are a lot of things I wanted to do but couldn’t, mostly because of time constraints, such as working on a humanitarian project, doing some photo shoots… and unfortunately I also had to drop from my sign language class… Well, maybe next year… We’ll see

That’s it ! Next posts will be about computer stuff, you’ll see, my dark side is coming back, it should be fun

Small update.

My vacations are coming to an end. The internship was a blast.

There’s nothing like learning how to cut the plaster with a saw on yourself…

I went to the OR a couple of times for some crazy surgeries (even an 8h surgery! I almost had an orgasm )

And I even managed to recycle my old magician skills making animals with balloons for the kids at the hospital.
It was truly a blast. I loved every single minute of it (yeah, even when I had to clean some Poop )

Otherwise, not much to say, except we (the tutoring association at my med’ school) are preparing the back-to-school season for the first year students. I’m implementing a quiz OCR system for it, because complete solutions are around 10k euros! Can you believe that?! WTF seriously… And finally I’ve been accepted to the Master of Biomedical Ethic course (which I would be doing at the same time than my 2nd medical year).

That’s pretty much it, enough of my life… Next time I’ll try to post a few technical posts again. Maybe about some reverse engineering work I’m currently doing, or about the quiz OCR system… We’ll see. Or, as Pierre pointed out, I should probably post again some stuff about cooking

Today was the day, the day they called us one by one to ask us whether we wanted to do medicine, dental… Then we had to choose our first 3 week internship.

I’m happy to report my first internship will start next Monday and I managed to get pediatric surgery.

Wish me luck not to kill someone or along those lines

I’m lacking words to express myself, it’s almost surreal…

So much happened in my life in the past few years, especially this past year. I took a chance and gambled my life with a great deal of uncertainties and doubts. Was I crazy? Did I really want too much? And after all.. Wasn’t my brain too old already to be up for the challenge?

I got the results yesterday, and I still can’t believe the results… but I passed. Among approx. 2400 people with 377 places for the medical field my final rank is 102nd which means I passed, and with a large margin. Hopefully this will enable me to get the internship I want this summer, I’ll know on Thursday.

Some say you see the movie of your life just before you die. The same happened to me yesterday, except I think it was my re-birth. Sorry for the cliché and for lacking words to describe it right now, but I just wanted to thanks my friends for their support and I’m relieved I didn’t have to disappoint them.

I’m very happy to say that Pauline passed too, but sadly, a lot of my other friends didn’t make it, which gives to this “victory” a really bitter flavor…

Anyway, here are my final results:

First Semester:

• Anatomy: 17.1 / 20 (weight: 1)
• Biology: 10.9 / 20 (weight: 2.6)
• Chemistry: 13.6 / 20 (weight: 2.3)
• Physics: 15.9 / 20 (weight: 2.3)
• Average Grade: 13.816
• Rank: 252

Second Semester:

• Biochemistry: 15.6 / 20 (weight: 2.6)
• Biophysics: 14.7 / 20 (weight: 2.1)
• Histology/Embryology: 12.5 / 20 (weight: 2.1)
• Physiology: 15 / 20 (weight: 1)
• SHS (Ethics, Philosophy, Sociology…): 18.5 / 20 (weight: 4)

Final average grade: 15 / 20
Final rank: 102
Numerous Clausus: 377 (for approx. 2400 candidates)

After “House, MD” (”Dr. House” in France), soon we should have “ChoJin, MD”

Just some random steadicam tests using my Flyer and Asdin’s Sony camera. I’ll probably help him shooting the next Adrone’s music video. We’ll see…

We can see Asdin giving a try with the steadicam near the end of the video

PS: Yes I know I should add weights to the sony camera, but I didn’t have anything to do so