Virtual Regional Anaesthesia Workshop for Trauma and Emergency by Muhammad Amir Ayub

It has been exciting to be involved with the following program that has been a collaboration between the Emergency and the Anesthesia departments of Hospital Kuala Lumpur. If you came just to watch the 2 hour video, here you go:

In the description of the video on YouTube are timestamps to skip to a particular segment.

And if you’d rather go to the production by the Emergency Department (going for a playlist of divided segments), you can go here:

The video was made using footage from a few sources:

  1. Screen recording with audio via GoToMeeting

  2. An iPhone 11 Pro with my Takstar SGC-598 on a Ulanzi U Rig Pro. Since this wasn’t my phone, I wasn’t sure regarding the available storage: I decided to record at 1080p 30 fps

  3. A DSLR of the A&E (which I never bothered knowing what the model is nor its settings)

I must first thank the A&E Department for giving me access to their footage and apply my touches to post-production.

I find it amazing that good video can be produced without much sophistication. You would know which parts were recorded on the iPhone: all shots focused on the presenters were recorded with the 11 Pro’s telephoto lens. Even though the recording was in 1080 and not 4K, I still found the close up shots to be good enough. Only the Q&A session videos recorded with the iPhone had any color/sharpness editing as they were full screen versus the picture in picture style with the slide presentations.

This is my first project that really used any of the microphones I’ve purchased before. And again, I’m happy with the results. Most of the audio used in the project were taken from that microphone recording. There was a huge difference in audio quality between that recorded by the microphone versus that streamed via GoToMeeting. As usual, all of the audio sources were edited: denoised with Brusfi, compressed (with a -6 dB limiter), and some had EQ (to further remove wind noise) and deesser effects added. I find that even minute movements of the camera (and hence mic) can be heard as little shocks as I move a book below the tripod (versus just turning the tripod itself); I need to keep this in mind next time.

That third video source was initially dubbed as a “behind the scenes” video for postmortem purposes. However, during the Q&A session, the footage seemed good enough (focusing well on one of the speakers) such that I wanted to use it (after some color edits and sharpening).

The software used to stream the webinar was GoToMeet. The videos involved were those of the presentation slides and the prerecorded videos. I find that the way the Emergency Department used this application to be intuitive. The video quality looked good enough (of course it’s dependent on the quality of the upstream). The only few glitches involved times where some audio inputs weren’t turned off when they were supposed to and another where one of the video sources were not streamed (hint: the Q&A session). But if I didn’t tell you, you might not have noticed as there were sufficient backup methods to cover these things up. I wonder if using this for my department’s future would be the way forward. But I need to convince people to spend the money involved for the subscription to this service. At the moment I’m familiar with the free tier of Google Meet, but this does not allow screen recording by itself.

Hopefully the videos that have been published so far have good education and production value.

URTI's and Pediatric Anesthesia by Muhammad Amir Ayub

Taking the time off work decaffeinating myself and writing some notes (among other things). This also while trying to get my thesis going and ramping up for exam season and cramming everything so that when I do get back to Melaka and meet again with my family (the new MCO has separated us longer than usual, again) I’m able to take care of the kids and take the burden off my wife’s back for her to cram her stuff. This leave was supposed to be for me to go back to Melaka for that very purpose.

But at least I’m now getting a lot of sleep and recovering much more while keeping my caffeine much more reasonable. In my last few calls, I was drinking a cup of coffee for every other LSCS case (during my current Maternity OT rotation), which meant a cup around every 4 hours. But at least the coffee is my self-made cold brew, facilitated by a new machine grinder (that I hope to review in the future): no added sugar and costs are much saved.

Cracking the Third Tower of Crossy Road Castle (Creepy Carnival) by Muhammad Amir Ayub

A couple of new videos are up on YouTube. In the latter, I managed to complete another 2 secret rooms but failed in another, making it now 3 secret rooms completed. The wackiness of this tower reminds me of Spring Yard Zone in Sonic 1 and Casino Night Zone of Sonic 2. I was a bit disappointed of being so close to reaching the third boss level.

A second shot at this level (Creepy Carnival Tower) and the first time meeting the first 2 bosses. The two runs were recorded on 2 separate occasions while I...
Solved another 2 secret rooms, but missed another. So now I've 3 successfully completed altogether with this Creepy Carnival Tower.