Omar Abu

So I've noticed I get on average one person a day to my site who was searching for "MIT Decision Date." Google in its infinite wisdom brings up my blog in the top hits because of a post a while back that talked about MIT's decision date (see here). Anyway I just wanted to set the record straight. If you are interested for the decision date coming up, you will be disappointed by that post because it was about Early Action. Now, if you do want to know the decision date and come across this well here you go. It will most likely be March 15th 2008. The official date will be released within the next two weeks, but according to past years, it should be March 15th. So now, you anxious MIT hopefuls can stop frantically searching the internet for a date that is not out there. I say that with kindness...I really do :-).

Guess what! The next two weeks are going to rock my socks. I only have two days of school next week (Tuesday/Wednesday). Monday I have a JETS Teams competition and Thurs./Fri. I have a research competition (Junior Science and Humanities Symposium). The week after that is state testing and so juniors are the only ones who have to go to school on Tuesday. Furthermore, on Wed. and Thurs. school does not start until 11 because juniors have more state testing in the morning. Then on Friday I have a programming competition. Thus, in the next two weeks, even though I will be uber busy, I will be totally enjoying the fruits of being a second semester senior.

Now for my feature presentation!
LOLZ CATS!!!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Great find Najah!

Return to your homes. Begin building a new life.

The HD-DVD has lost to its formidable foe Blu-ray. It seems the all intense war between these advanced disk technolgies is finally over and that Blu-ray will take the world into the next generation. Things pretty much went downhill for the HD-DVD camp when many rental services and retail outlets (*cough netflix and Bestbuy) began supporting Blu-ray a few weeks ago and announced that they would stop promoting HD-DVD products. This caused a flurry of panic and soon after major movie studios began forming alliances with Blu-ray and eventually Toshiba the HD-DVD producing giant finally realized that they would have to cut their losses and surrender. Toshiba who has mainly kept HD-DVD alive had to give in to the pressure around as basically everyone abondoned the HD-DVD format. As a result, Toshiba said that they would produce Blu-ray technology. This essentially ended all support for HD-DVD, except of course for Microsoft, the makers of it. Supposedly, however, they will begin supporting Blu-ray technology as well since it's all about business and not pride. Even Toshiba is proclaiming that they still think HD-DVD is superior, but after all they are in the game of business and so they must go with the flow.

All in all, it has been fun following the format war, seeing top company execs make fun of each other and denounce the other side. Now I guess Sony actually may sell some Playstation 3s although I do hear that Microsoft is considering making Blu-ray drives for the Xbox 360. I'm just glad I did not buy a HD-DVD drive for my xbox as I was about to since they were on discount. Now we can all rest assured that the Blu-ray drives we buy in the future will be around for some time (prolly a couple years until another format becomes popular).

More on what HD-DVD and Blu-ray really are:
Blu-ray wiki page
HD-DVD wiki page

Read more about it here:
Engadget retrospective

This weekend is not like any other weekend. Oh no! It is three days long! 72 hours! 4320 minutes! 259200 seconds! Why you may ask. Because it is mid-winterbreak of course. Even though many schools do not have this, I think there should be a mid-winter break for everyone because February is such a slow month. Don't feel too jealous though. I do not have Monday completely off. I still have math class...and some research stuff to do. Regardless, I do not have to wake up early...and yoooouuuuu doooooo!

Lately, I have been watching this incredibly amazing show called The Big Bang Theory. This show is absolutely tailored just for nerds like me. It constantly has scientific jokes and allusions and probably every stereotype about nerds. I especially enjoyed the reference to MIT (of which there are many in different episodes). If you hate science, then perhaps this show might disgust you and make you hate TV forever. For the rest of us, however, I dare you, watch the clip below and see for yourself just how awesome nerds are.

So I'm really into those chocolate covered expresso beans, especially the ones that Starbucks sells since they're so darn tasty. Anyway, even though it is not very healthy, I usually finish a nice, hearty sized bag in like 4 days, jacking my body up on the non-illegal drug caffeine. And every time I do this, the next day I am in agony from a headache so big well it makes things look small. At this very moment, I have one of those headaches and I feel crappy. I feel like I want to bang my head into the wall a million times until it is so numb I cant feel anything anymore. It was worth it though just in case you were wondering. Totally worth it. If you haven't experienced the wonder of chocolate covered expresso beans, then I suggest you go out right NOW and buy some! Why are you doing still reading?! Go NOW!

In other news, Duke loves me...it really loves me!!! I can't wait to visit.

WOW! My school's production of Thoroughly Modern Millie was amazing. It was completely different from previous musicals that my school has done and frankly it just put a smile on my face. It was fun and lively with humor all throughout and even cantonese translations, fake asian accents, and high rise views. Kudos to everyone involved.

Now because I felt that it was time to blog about my research, I took a picture of what a dissected leech looks like through the eyepiece of a microscope. Below is a leech that I opened up and pinned out, so enjoy the view!



So basically I use these leech preps to do various experiments that involve neuron development. If you look at the long white thing in the middle (running horizontally), you would be looking at the Central Nervous System of the leech. I investigate how this system makes connections with the surrounding muscles (specifically the heart tube muscles) and what affects such development. So now the boring part of this post is over.

Now to the farewell part of the post: Goodbye!

I just got back from my math midterm and am glad to say I pwned it and finished very early. The only thing I could not figure out is why the professor calls it a midterm, more specifically midterm 1. Yes, we have two midterms. Midterm 1 and midterm 2. In actuality, they should be called thirdterms or something. But anyway, I could go on and on about this and get no where so let me complain about how I had a midterm on what should have been a day off.

So out here in the midwest it has been very chilly. How chilly? So cold I had a Cold Day today! Apparently the school district thinks we are going to freeze our limbs off going out to school and then whine during class about how cold it is and so they just figure we might as well not have school. Works for me. I'd rather wrap myself in a blanket and pretend that it is not -10 F outside my window. Unfortunately, the university here is strict and wants their kids to lose fingers on their way to class, meaning I had to go to my math class today and take the mid errr thirdterm. Oh well, maybe I'll luck out and have another day off tomorrow (I doubt it).

In other news, I guess my final AMC is tomorrow. I have been doing the AMC since 6th grade and now that I am a senior I will be taking my last one tomorrow (or in a couple weeks if there is a Cold Day tomorrow). I'm not going to tear up about this or anything (or am I?), but it does not hurt to be nostalgic for just a few moments...and there all done with the trip down memory lane.

For some good news, the writers strike should be ending soon. This does not mean new shows will magically spring up on TV anytime soon. While production should resume, the fate of many TV shows is still undecided. Check out this chart at NY Times about the fate of your popular show.

Last night, I was reminded of a really funny comedian...a really funny brown comedian! Go ahead and watch. It is a forty-five minute act, but at least watch the beginning and see if you like him.

A while back, I was sitting around on my couch eating some chips and thinking to myself, "Self, why not have wireless electricity. It is such a pain to have to lug around charger cables when going on vacations, having no phone for a day because you forgot to charge it, having to stay near an outlet when on a laptop and yadda yadda yadda." Then I shrugged and figured I have no idea how that would be done.

Zoom forward a few months...I see in the news that a MIT team has made wireless electricity! They were able to light a 60W battery from a power source that was 2 meters away with no wires what so ever. How does this work? They like to call it WiTricity. Now think about this. We have electromagnetic radiation all around us. Whizzing by, entering through are body and we dont even notice it. This radiation has a lot of energy, but we cannot use it for power because it goes in all directions and so is wasted. So what's the key? Magnetic coupled resonance. Now we all know about resonance. It is what causes a glass to shatter when someone sings a loud note that matches the frequency of the glass. It is all about matching frequencies. So when imagine if two objects had the same resonant frequency. They would be able to interact with each other with minimal interaction with objects of different frequencies. Using copper coils, one to send and one to receive, the sending coil generates a resonating magnetic field which causes the receiving coil to resonate. This then brings enough power to even run a laptop. In fact, a laptop would charge automatically or not even need a battery at all while in the room! Anyway, I just thought I'd introduce you all to the future. Check out more here.

In other news, this is just another boring old week. Nothing new. No snow days, no nothing. Although I did have a photo shoot yesterday which was quite awesome. I volunteer at Borgess Medical Center and the hospital was trying to promote its volunteer opportunities so they wanted to make brochures and such. So they had me come in for some pictures around where I normally work (intensive care). I walked around while he snapped pics in front of me as I walked. Those were cool since he slowed the shutter speed, making everything a little blurry except me. He took pictures of me coming out of the unit as the automatic doors opened. Those were interesting too. And then he took a lot of random shots here and there. It was really great though, since it is a busy area and so lots of people were watching and wondering what was going on. Definitely fun stuff.

Anyway, gotta go.

LOL!!!

These are imo the funniest commercials I saw during the superbowl yesterday. Check it:




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There were a lot of other awesome commercials too. Comment about your favorite one!

Another great improv stunt by Improv Everywhere: Frozen at Grand Central.

Enjoy!!!

This was my schedule for the past week:

Monday - School ->>> Chicago
Tuesday - Chicago
Wednesday - Snow Day
Thursday - School ( One class and a 2 1/2 hour lecture )
Friday - Snow day

The odds of all this happening in one week is like a statistical anomaly, but it happened...to me!!! I was out of town and had two snow days. I couldn't ask for a better week.

In other news, apparently Microsoft is at it again, trying to enslave us all and rule the world. They now desire to take over Yahoo and are throwing around such numbers as 44.6 billion as if it's loose pocket change (it probably is). I just hope I dont start getting system errors when I login to my Yahoo account if Microsoft does take control. Check out all the juicy details here at the NY times.