Vatentine's day roses

Picture taken over 4 days starting on the 3rd of this month. I didn't take any picture yesterday as we were away to Nottingham.

This is the first rose to bloom in my garden. It is from a stem of rose from a bouquet that I had bought for my wife on Valentine's day this year.

All I had done was strip flowers and leaves off the stems and stick them in the soil. This was the only one that survived

San Francisco Sightseeing

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name 'San Francisco'. I guess different people may answer differently: the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island Gay rights, etc. As for me, it's a song - San Francisco (be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie (1967). It goes like this:

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there ...

It recalls the Summer of love when thousands of young people from all around the US came to the city to experience the Hippie counterculture.

San Francisco has loads of tourist attractions and things to do. If you are planning a San Francisco Sightseeing trip, you might want to consider Trusted Tours. This national tour operator has a number of great deals on their San Francisco tours. Looking through the various offers, one I would love to take is the San Francisco Motorized Cable Car Tour, a 2.5 Hours long guided tour aboard an authentic motorized cable car. It costs only $26.60 for an adult and $13.30 for a child. The tour takes you through some of the most interesting parts of the city including Vista Point at Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks, Fisherman's Wharf, Palace of Fine Arts and more.

You can also up for the Trusted Tours eNewsletter to get the latest low price deals direct by email.

On the road with Karen

Just visited Karen's blog - ' My Road'. It has a nice tidy layout and regular visitors might have realised by now that I have a soft spot for minimalistic web templates. The banner also fits the name of the blog.

I had a look at the coding of the site and noticed that the title html tags are missing. It might be a good idea to add them as they do play a part in search rankings.

Just learnt about the "Steps to Better Blogging" while going through her blog. I might join in as well. She is also one of the bloggers who "Do follow", so go over and leave her a comment.

The kids loving the pool

It has been a great week - bright and sunny. We had bought an inflatable pool from a car boot sale sometime back and never had the chance to use it. Finally got the chance.

It turned out to be much bigger that I thought it would be. It didn't take that long to inflate the pool using the electric pump. However, it did take much longer to fill it up - almost an hour.

My son is turning into an aquatic animal and refuses to come out of the pool. I have to literally force him out it screaming and kicking. I guess it's a wonderful experience for him.

Online Rock n' Roll fashion store

The Remnant online store specialises in exclusive rock n' roll inspired fashion targeted to a niche market.

Not sure whether all my readers will agree but I think that those designs are really awesome. The brands they carry include Drifter, Bleeding Star, Evil Genius, Cardboard Robot among others. One thing that will definitely appeal to their customers is the fact that they take payment by PayPal besides credit cards.

Meme for charity

Finally completed this long overdue meme. I was tagged by Haq Ahamd better known as Dad of Four.

This meme is quite long and is for a noble cause. It was started by Idham who has pledged to contribute RM127 to the Rumah Anak Yatim Darul 'Izzah orphanage in Malaysia for each meme completed by any blogger before 26th August 2007. His target is RM10,000.

All you have to do is to complete at least seventeen out of the following twenty seven sentences. It took me a while but I finally completed all of it.

However, just remember to leave a comment on Idham's blog to let him know that you have done the meme.

So here goes:

1. A person is only as good as ... his actions.

2. Friendship is always ... something that should not be taken for granted.

3. To love is to... share happy and sad moments, willingly.

4. Money makes me... work.

5. I miss ... going to work

6. My way of saying I care is by ... kissing and hugging.

7. I try to spread love and happiness by... helping others in need.

8. Pick the flowers when... I really have too, other wise I perfer them on the plant.

9. To love someone is to... give in completely.

10. Beauty is... but skin deep.

11. When I was thirteen, what I remember the most was... a family trip to Udaipur in Rajasthan India.

12. When I was twenty one, I remember... thinking whether to further my study or start working.

13. I am most happy when ... I am with my family.

14. Nothing makes me happier than ... waking up everyday next to a wonderful lady who's my wife.

15. If I can change one thing, I will change... nothing.

16. If smiles were...forced ...then I... won't be happyseeing the face of my kids smiling everyday.

17. Wouldn't it be nice if we could... travel and live anywhere we wanted without any restrictions.

18. If you want to ... earn a lot of money ...then you have to ... work much harder

19. Money is not everything but...we can't live without it.

20. The most touching moment I have experienced is... when I first held my daughter after she came out of my wife's womb.

21. I smile when...I feel happy

22. When I am happy, I...smile

23. If only I don't have to ... exercise in order to be fit but that's impossible.

24. The best thing I did yesterday was... something I do almost everyday - take care of the kids.
25. If I ever write a book, I will give it this title... ah ok lah

26. One thing I must do before I die is... remember God!

27. Doing this meme, I feel like ... I have learnt a little bit about myself.

I now tag:
1. Azwan
2. Lilian
3. Doris

and anyone else who wants to do this meme.

Online plagiarism checker

Plagiarism occurs when people steal and pass off someone else's written or creative work, as their own. It doesn't matter if it is whole or in part. This also includes reproduction of the work without crediting the source.

I used to lecture at a Public University in Malaysia as well as in private educational institutions and I was quite shocked to see how ignorant most students were regarding plagiarism. Studies in the US also show similar findings. According to surveys there, 80% College students admitted to un-intentional plagiarism. 75% students admitted to cheating and 95% did not believe they would get caught. However, 100% were caught by their institutions.

It is getting tougher and tougher to detect plagiarism, what with the so many resources available in a few clicks plus the ability to just 'copy and paste' into a Word document.

Some students assumed that it is OK to "create" a paper from different sources using the 'copy and paste' method without hardly any original content. They were not aware that we only tolerate Plagiarism to only about 5% of the total document text. Worse, they would not have any references as to where they obtained the various information from. Even with the sources provided, some didn't even bother to change the formatting when they copied from websites so you would suddenly have different paragraph formatting and different font and color dark blue as compared to the rest of the text. Another easy way to detect plagiarism , especially in assignments was when there were a few paragraphs in excellent English followed by paragraphs that I couldn't even understand.

They were quite shocked when I failed them. I explained that ignorance is not an excuse and plagiarism is really serious issue especially in the academic sector. In the West, it is considered a crime and if proven guilty, the individual can be expelled form the educational institutions.

From experience, I learnt that this is not limited to students. there are so many reports of academics being fired from their jobs or suspended because it was suddenly discovered that they had plagiarized other people's work.

While surfing the net, I noticed an ad for a new online service, "iPlagiarismCheck.com - Click here to visit us today!. The iPlagiarismCheck services were developed and marketed by Plagiarism-Checkers, Inc., a company based in New York, USA. This unique service will benefit both teachers and students (college, university, or school students) alike.

Their patented software technology is completely online, so you don't have to worry about installing any software. The software will check :
1) Internet: the software checks blogs, directories, cache as well as PDFs, submitted articles etc all over the Internet.
2) Publications: books, articles, journals etc. hard or soft printed.
3) Even the most subtle attempts at Plagiarism will be detected as they check sentence structures and word-synonyms.

All these checks are carried out instantly and securely. Right now they have several packages available starting from $5.00 for a single document.