Slight rambling here:
I was too busy with medical school to maintain this fine blog of mine.
Well, it's also that my questioning of who I really am - the dichotomy that is my identity, makes me hesitant in updating technological blogs when I don't even have a good medical-related blog. Well I do have one but it's not public. Not even Google-searchable, only accessible if I give the URL.
Anyways. What I wanted to post here, are ways that I use my background knowledge of computers and programming to help me save some seconds doing the "dailys" in a medical student.
Let me see what I can spill here...
First my background layer: I use Xubuntu and Linux Mint XFCE as my operating systems. This means I don't need to deal with Windows anymore. I can be free of viruses, malware, shaming myself of illegally obtaining said Operating System, and join the open-source revolution. Not a dime to megacorps software, and donations to open-source software developers that I truly admire and used. For instance, I donated $10 to the makers of Synergy (tool of which I will discuss later).
My gear: I have 3 main devices that I use to study = two laptops and a Nexus 7 tablet.
My trusty Acer Aspire 5610 runs XFCE Linux Mint, and it's around 7 years old. This came with that awful bitter taste called Windows Vista, and since taking the plunge into Linux 6 years ago, this laptop stands to go strong for more years to come.
Another laptop was donated to me by a student from my med school. She spilled something on it, and the motherboard, upon taking it apart, was burnt. Harddrive was also fried. It was a Thinkpad - and I love Thinkpads' chassis and keyboard so much that I decided to buy a new motherboard for it. This one guy had an upgrade version of the motherboard with a kick-ass graphics chip on it, so I splurged an extra $100 to buy it.
Onwards to how I use it now, after many many experiments of a good study environment.
In a nutshell, my mouse and keyboard that are hooked on to the Acer laptop can slide over to my Thinkpad laptop, with the help of Synergy. This means I have a dual screen setup. Generally, the greater surface area you have, the more productive you are. Not only that, I have two laptops simulating it, so I have two entirely capable hardware running programs, which kinda works like having a very capable single laptop (but expensive).
Not only that, my Thinkpad can access my Acer's harddrives and folders by way of the open-source software called NFS.
Ah, but I haven't discussed how is it I run Thinkpad, when its harddrive was fried. I run the entire operating system (Xubuntu) from USB. I didn't do the LiveCD to USB method, but rather used the Xubuntu USB LiveCD image to do an actuall install to the 8GB USB drive, so it acts much like a harddisk installation. Of course, I had to do some minor adjustments to the fstab to get the EXT4 FS to not write so much onto the RAM.
Where does my Nexus 7 fit in? Well, it fits perfectly in my lab coat pocket, so I pack it with textbooks to read. But the biggest winner software (or 'app' since we're talking Android.. ) is Anki.
Anki is a spaced-memorization software, much like what Firecracker is based on. What I don't like about Firecracker, due to largely by my insolence, is that I really feel like I need to write the questions myself, after reading from a textbook. Maybe it's because I'm old fashioned. I don't like being asked to conform to a system, at least when it comes to software.
Anki solved this, but it took me an year to get used to using it. I still haven't cracked how to actually finish the questions I made - I made close to 10,000 this year (M3) and I still have 1000Qs in USMLEWorld and 2 rotations to go. I stopped using it during first year due to this very reason, but theoretically you get to read actively, which solves the biggest problem in reading textbooks - just mindlessly moving my eyes. At least I get forced to give an answer and get them right. It's just I can't do more than 200 per day, but then that's something I have to overcome.
Anyway, Anki started as an open-source software for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It also has iPhone, Android apps as well. It even has free online syncing capabilities, so that whatever questions I make in my laptop, I can sync it to my Nexus 7, and just do the questions while I'm on the many wait-modes on the ward.
Another awesome open-source Linux software is an automator, which automates mouse clicks and keyboard entries, but much more. It's kind of like AutoHotkey in the Windows world. The name of it is called xdotool.
You can do a lot with it, but what I made last year saves me that annoying redundant step of entering my login info, clicking, and more clicking to get to the actual screen of a certain question bank.
On to another thing that I came across, and due to it being near the edge of a EULA of a certain question bank I will be somewhat cryptic here. Let's say you have a Java-based solution of a study material that locks your laptop keys so it only works in its Java software, perhaps due to potential copyright infringement. Rightfully so, but also is a pain in the ass if you want to write notes.
I mean, to take notes you either have to write them on paper, or hope on a dual screen monitor, maybe the lock doesn't work. What about if you want to take a screenshot of a diagram so you can keep it in your One Note or Evernote?
Well, with Synergy, the locking effect doesn't work. Meaning, if I use that software in my Acer laptop, I can take notes/write Anki questions on my Thinkpad laptop. Cool.
But then, why do I have to type the stuff that's already on screen? Why can't I just bypass the copy/paste lock of this Java software? The only way would be, that I came up of, is an OCR text-recognition from a screenshot I would take of the text inside the Java software. By the way, taking screenshot is always possible in Linux when you run that Java software.
So, I searched if there are ANY free open-source solutions that do OCR. I came across one : tesserect-ocr. And then upon tinkering with it, along with some formatting I did with the help of sed, I got my solution. I would take a screenshot of the text, save it to an image file of a set name, and on my Thinkpad laptop, run my script to run tesseract-ocr, save it to a text file, and open it up on a text editor. I would then copy that text to Anki, trim/edit to make my questions.
It wasn't quick enough. So, I bound the script to a key-combination of my keyboard, which just comes with XFCE-based distributions(under 'Keyboard' settings).
Thus, now I can save a screenshot, wave my mouse across to my other laptop, use my key combination to run the image-to-text conversion.
Now, I realized I'd freak out if any of my two laptops would somehow get busted. So, I finally pushed myself to set up a backup solution, using rsync and cron. My crucial setting/scripts would be stored to my external 1TB harddrive everyday at dawn. Since my Thinkpad entirely runs from my 8GB USB drive, that one's backup involved doing the same thing but just dd-dumping the entire 8GB image to my external harddrive. It works, and hopefully this will save me if such happens that need saving.
Results of all of these efficiency solutions?
I'd say It's the same as not using any of these solutions, because I've found out technical solutions can be a dangerous gamble and distraction. Time invested in creating solutions often go overboard, as it is my hobby, enough to bleed into studying time. Making is one thing, using it consistently is another. Anki card-making takes a long time still, and I have yet to come to a fruitful result using this solution.
Anki is still a lifestyle to master, as I found it very boring to having to click through the questions I made. However, that part is just the life of a medical student - always at the crossroads of denial or buckling down for studying.
Whew. Back to studying and dealing with M4 prep.
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