Senam otak

Banyak cara dilakukan untuk dapat membuat awal hari menjadi bersemangat, salah satunya dengan latihan otak sederhana di pagi hari. Berolahraga otak di pagi hari dapat membantu Anda merasa lebih siap menghadapi hari dan juga meningkatkan energi dan kegembiraan.
Latihan otak beberapa menit sebelum keluar kamar tidur untuk mandi atau saat berdandan dapat membangun pikiran dan indera Anda untuk siap menjalani aktivitas dan rutinitas sepanjang hari. Latihan tersebut bisa berupa latihan fisik, mental atau kombinasi keduanya.

Dilansir Livestrong, Selasa (21/12/2010), berikut beberapa latihan otak sederhana yang dapat dilakukan di pagi hari:

1. Bernyanyi sambil melakukan aktivitas lain
Bernyanyi atau bersenandung saat Anda sedang berpakaian atau menyiapkan sarapan dapat menjadi latihan yang merangsang otak 'bangun' di pagi hari.

Latihan ini dapat meningkatkan jumlah dendrit atau garis sel saraf di otak yang memungkinkan otak untuk berfungsi, sehingga mengaktifkan lebih dari satu fungsi sensor yang dapat merangsang aktivitas otak.

2. Ubah rutinitas
Menurut Lawrence Katz, profesor Neurobiologi di Duke University Medical Center, mengubah rutinitas dan cara-cara hidup baru dapat mengaktifkan koneksi otak yang sebelumnya tidak aktif.

Latihan yang bisa dilakukan misalnya, bila Anda selalu menuju kamar mandi saat bangun tidur ubah menjadi minum kopi dulu, sikat gigi sebelum berpakaian atau mencoba menu sarapan baru yang belum pernah sebelumnya.

3. Olahraga Sederahana
Latihan fisik dapat meningkatkan kesehatan otak, karena dapat meningkatkan aliran darah ke otak. Lakukan olahraga sederhana, misalnya peregangan, yoga, bersepeda, jogging atau jalan santai.

Menurut Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, latihan fisik dapat meningkatkan perhatian, penalaran dan memori.

4. Latihan sensasi
Libatkan otak dengan gerakan setelah bangun dan sebelum Anda keluar dari tempat tidur. Mulai dari kaki, gerakkan jari, kontraksi otot betis dan kemudian kencangkan lutut.

Fokus pada bagaimana otot-otot merasa saat Anda bergerak. Gerakan tubuh akan menginstruksikan otak untuk fokus pada berbagai bagian tubuh sampai mencapai wajah. Mengencangkan bibir, mengerutkan hidung dan kemudian mengangkat alis dapat merangsang otak dan organ internal.

Scratch Programming 3

Make sure you have sound turned on for this one.

Click the top right hand corner Green Flag to start the animation, and click the round stop sign to finish it.

This post is all about using Scratch to animate your Name in interesting ways.

We built this first project: "Animate Your Name: Passy Rocks" as follows.

First we obtained some raw images of letters off the Internet. For each letter we obtained two images: the normal letter, and then another “old style” version of the letter. We then used Photoshop to reduce their size to 50x50 and saved them to our PC as .GIF files.

We then set up our first sprite for the letter P, and imported two costumes for it, containing the normal letter, and the surprise “old style” version.



We then set up the following Script on the letter P, to make it rock forward and back, and then pause on the surprise letter, and keep repeating forever. Later on we fine tuned the numerical values, but the script structure was kept the same.



To create the remaining letters, it was just a matter of right clicking this Sprite in the Scratch work environment and selecting “Duplicate” and then modifying it to be a different letter in the costume, and dragging it to its position on the stage.

We then created an additional Sprite containing a picture of a Guitarist, and made him appear only when the second set of letters appear by setting up his scripting as follows:



This worked fine in the Scratch Environment, but the timing was out when it was played online on the web page here. We managed to fix this by creating a Broadcast message to the Guitar Sprite to appear when the letters change costume.

To fix this we do NOT need to create a new variable called "LettersChanged". Instead we simply bring out a "Broadcast" control block, and we can define the message name of "LettersChanged" right there, via "new" on the control block.

We set up the letter P to broadcast "LettersChanged", and the guitar sprite to receive this and act upon it by appearing on the stage. (Show/Hide commands).

We also needed a restarting message, so that the guitarist could hide afterwards. We set this up in the letter P script as well.

On the Guitarist Sprite, we then imported a Scratch "cymbal crash" sound into the project, and set up for it to play whenever the guitarist appears.

For the Letter P sprite we introduced Drums, but had a problem with the Guitar Sprite turning them off, and so we had to add a receiving broadcast message statement to reactivate the drums.

We then played around with some timings, and were done. Note that adding sounds took our project from 287K up to 432K in size.

For the Stage background, we just used one of the “Indoors” backgrounds that comes with Scratch.

However, when we put it on our website and played it online, the sounds did not quite sync up, and so we had to adjust the timings loop numbers etc again.
Eventually we got it all working in time.

Here is the final Letter P script:



And here is the finished script for the Guitarist Sprite:



The other letters of our name each have the following script on them:





Making a Musical Name - Version 1

This project was adapted from a Project made by "atyo-dickerson" that we found at the MIT site at: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/atyo-dickerson/514178

It uses X and Y coordinate positions of the mouse to create different pitched notes, when the mouse is moved across the background.

Click the top right hand corner Green Flag to start the animation, and click the round stop sign to finish it. Now Drag the mouse all over the screen to paint the name and hear some wonderful music. Press the Space Bar to clear the screen at any time.

To build this animation, four copies of the original name text were created as separate costumes.



The following code was then used to alternate through the costumes while repeatedly cloning them with the "Stamp" command. The number 16 "Dulcimer" sound was used, as per the original MIT project.





Making a Musical Name - Version 2

Make sure you have sound turned on, then click the top right hand corner Green Flag to start the animation. Then move the mouse across the letters to play the piano note for each letter.

Changing the bottom right hand corner speed will vary the sustain of the notes. (Space Bar Clears all line drawings).

The main parts of this project were taken from a similar project by “Duckey355” from the MIT site at: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Duckey355/57592

First of all the animation has some introductory instructions text contained in the costume for "Sprite1". The script for Sprite1 contains the "ghost" effect which immediately fades the text away as soon as the green Start flag is clicked.



The letters for our name were all obtained by Photoshopping an Alphabet we got from Google Images, and saving each cropped letter as a transparent .PNG file.

The Background has Scripting to set the "Speed" variable to an initial value of 0.2. There is also coding for space bar to clear the pen drawings at any time.



The Speed variable icon was then right clicked on the Stage and set to "Slider" so that a range of values could be chosen between 0 and 1. Large values make long music notes, and short values make short stacatto type notes.

The Letters are each set up the same. The coordinates of their start position in the script are obtained by reading off the values of where they are on the screen when moved to their stage positions during the build.

When we click on the "Play Note" values it gives us a Piano keyboard to pick the note number. We used the notes for our letters as Middle-C=60, D=62, E=64, G=67, High-C=72. So by pressing the letters P, A, and S, on our name in the right order, we can actually play "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

There is also code to make the Pen drawn lines and the letters return to their original start positions each time.





Getting R2D2 to Say Our Name

Make sure you have sound turned on, then click the top right hand corner Green Flag to start the animation. Type your text into the bottom of screen input box, and then click the tick mark to hear R2D2 say your message.

We got this project by "Leylosh" from the MIT site at http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/complex/924468

This project came with the alphabet of R2D2 sounds already imported, (one sound for each letter of the alphabet). When we type our name in the Input Box, the Script goes through each letter from left to right, making the appropriate R2D2 noise each time.

All we did at Passy World was create a new red R2D2, to match a Background we saved from Google Images and Photoshopped to the standard Scratch background size of 480x360.

Here is the Script that runs for the whole R2D2 translator.



So that's our name done to the max in Scratch.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

NYE 2010 Friday Funny

Image Source: http://blogs.reuters.com

It's New Year's Eve and we know a few people are going to be letting their hair down. So this Friday we are looking at all the funny things that happen when people get drunk.

Let's start off responsibly with some suggestions for warning labels that should be placed on bottles of alcohol, and definitely needed on NYE.

CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL WARNINGS

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a w@nker.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell the same boring story over and over again until your friends want to smash your face in.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at 4 in the morning.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your clothes.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with other members of the opposite sex without spitting.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may cause you to roll over in the morning and see something really scary (whose name, and/or species you can't remember).

Warning: Consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns on the forehead.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead to traffic signs and cones appearing in your home.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe you are invisible.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you possess mystical Kung-Fu powers.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that people are laughing with you.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may cause an influx in the time-space continuum, whereby small (and sometimes large) gaps of time may seem to literally disappear.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may actually cause pregnancy.

Jokes Source: http://www.lifeisajoke.com

The important thing to keep in mind when consuming alcohol is Moderation:


Image Source: http://cdn.faniq.com

The next important factor to realise is that with alcohol impaired senses, accidents can easily happen:


Image Source: http://www.funpub.net

Here is a very educational YouTube video all about things that happen when our senses are severely impaired.



Drunk Test Fail

A police officer pulls over this guy who's been weaving in and out of the lanes. He goes up to the guy's window and says, "Sir, I need you to blow into this breathalyzer tube.

"The man says, "Sorry, officer, I can't do that. I am an asthmatic. If I do that, I'll have a really bad asthma attack."

"Okay, fine. I need you to come down to the station to give a blood sample."
"I can't do that either. I am a hemophiliac. If I do that, I'll bleed to death."

"Well, then, we need a urine sample."
"I'm sorry, officer, I can't do that either. I am also a diabetic. If I do that, I'll get really low blood sugar."

"All right, then I need you to come out here and walk this white line."
"I can't do that, officer."

"Why not?"
"Because I'm too drunk."

Jokes Source: http://www.lifeisajoke.com

There is an old wives tale that a cold bath or shower is the best way to sober up. This picture totally disproves that theory once and for all!


Image Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com

Here is a nice little YouTube song all about drinking beer



Here are some graphic images all about some certain signs that you might be drinking too much.


Image Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com

And proof that whatever boys can do, girls can do better!


Image Source: http://www.mydrunkbuddy.com

TOP 10 SIGNS YOU MAY BE DRINKING TOO MUCH

1. You lose arguments with inanimate objects.

2. You have to hold onto the lawn to keep from falling off the earth.

3. The back of your head keeps getting hit by the toilet seat.

4. You sincerely believe alcohol to be the elusive 5th food group.

5. 24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a pack - coincidence?

6. You can focus better with one eye closed.

7. The parking lot seems to have moved while you were in the bar.

8. Hey, 5 beers has just as many calories as a burger, forget dinner!

9. You are beginning to find cricket to be exciting.

10. That stupid pink elephant followed me home again.

Jokes Source: http://www.lifeisajoke.com

Here is a charming little country hillbilly tune as the last of this week's videos.



As we tick down to the New year, we want to wish all of our readers a safe and happy NYE. We look forward to a great year in ICT heaven in 2011.


Image Source: http://photos1.meetupstatic.com

So Cheers Big Ears and Happy New Years Eve!


Image Source: http://images.clubzone.com

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Ultimate Gaming Computer

Perhaps this is not the "ultimate" gaming computer, but it's as close as we could get on our limited budget here at Passy World. We are extremely happy with the performance and we are certain it will provide many hours of enjoyment in the years to come.

Our goal was to build a high performance Gaming PC that would last at least 2 or 3 years, with "Santa" supplying the parts. Here are the specs of the PC we have built.

Passy World Gaming PC Specifications:

• Motherboard – Asus Sabertooth X58 LGA1366
• CPU - Intel Core i7 950
• CPU Cooler – Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus
• RAM - Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600
• PSU - Antec Earth Watts 750W
• Storage - Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200RPM
• Optical Drives – 2X Asus Lite Scribe
• Graphics Card – Gigabyte Radeon HD5870
• Case – Antec 902
• Monitor - Asus VH242H 24”
• Keyboard - Alienware TactX Keyboard
• Mouse - Razer Deathadder
• Speakers - Creative Inspire T6160
• O/S - Windows 7 64bit Home

My son actually did all the research and pricing for the PC, and I am very impressed with what he came up with as the final solution.

We purchased nearly all of our components from Computer Parts Land "CPL" here in Melbourne Australia, and their service, advice, and component availability is absolutely awesome. Check out their website at:
http://www.cpl.net.au/

The Creative speakers were obtained from MSY Computers, http://www.msy.com.au/ who are also a great supplier of PC components, and located not far from CPL in suburban Melbourne.

We are particularly delighted with the Antec 902 Case which was great value at around $100. We had wanted to use a Coolermaster HAFX but it was twice the price, and we could not stretch the budget that far.

Even though the Antec 902 is only a mid tower case, it has plenty of room, (including room for big GPU's like the 5870). It is also very well constructed, with high quality parts, fans, and drive bays.

In particular, the 902 has this massive big fan on top of the case for awesomely powerful cooling.



For Memory we were going to use "G Skill Ripjaws 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 1600" but since it was not available we switched to Kingston, which has worked out fine.



The CPU Cooler was the trickiest part of the build, as we had not done one of these before, and the fold out printed instructions were not any good for complete beginners.

However, You Tube to the rescue, and we found this perfect video about how to install this awesome after market cooler.



Another great set of videos we watched before building our PC was this great set by "PCWizKid". These videos are excellent, and show most of the main steps needed to build your own PC.



There are three parts in the series, and this is Part Two.



Here is the third and final part of the series. We highly recommend you watch these if you are ever thinking about building your own PC.



And one additional video, all about "Cable Management" inside your PC case.




One small problem we had during the build was getting Windows 7 to recognise that we had 6 Gig of memory, and not 4 Gig. However, this was easily solved by switching off the PC, swapping the RAM sticks around with each other "musical chairs" style, and then rebooting the machine.

A fantastic thing we must mention about ASUS Motherboards is their use of a tiny PINs circuit board to make front-of-case to motherboard connection a breeze. It was hard to get a good photo of this, but here is our best attempt.



Basically, we just plug the case leads (which Antec had labelled brilliantly), into the appropriate miniboard plug, and then plug the minboard, into the Motherboard pin set... too easy!!

The Driver Discs that came with our Hardware were all very simple to use. They worked a treat, making the installation final steps very quick and easy.

For connecting to Wireless Internet we used a Netgear WG111V2 USB wireless adapter. We downloaded the Windows 7 drivers using our laptop, and saved them onto a USB stick. They installed okay, but as per Internet forums it is important not to install the Netgear management system, and to instead select the option to use Windows for handling the wireless network connection.

We lashed out spending a few dollars on a Razer Gaming Mouse, and we are very happy with this unit, especially its glow in the dark illumination.



The Alienware Keyboard was worth every cent of the $130 we spent ordering it online from Malaysia. It also came with only four days remaining until Christmas, which we thought was totally awesome service by Dell.

The glow in the dark fully lit Alienware keyboard is absolutely awesome.



A full set of different color combinations available for the keyboard is shown as part of the following Wondershare Slideshow.

This slideshow has photos from the build of our Ultimate Gaming PC which was done right here at Passy World.

(Note that it is quite a big slideshow and may take a while to load in).

Press the play button to start the Slideshow.



(If you are interested in buying Wondershare for making your own slideshows, then then click this link: http://www.wondershare.com/ and then under Products and Digital Photo Tools locate "Flash Gallery Factory Deluxe". (We have been using this particular product for quite a while here at Passy World and highly recommend it).

Finally we need to thank our good friend Laurie C, who helped us out with the final setting up and performance testing of our new PC.

Performance testing shows that our PC has nearly perfect scores in all areas except for drive access speed, (simply because we are not using a Solid State Drive.)



Some of the best gaming fun the boys have had so far, is playing with the foam packaging that came with the Antec Case.... In fact it appears they've just invented the world's first human dual core processor..lol...



Anyway, we're off to get into some serious COD action on the new PC.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Friday Funny Xmas 2010

Image Source: http://farm6.static.flickr.com

Here at Passy World we'd just like to wish a big Merry Christmas to all those cool cats who have enjoyed using our website in 2010.


Image Source: http://christmas.xeweb.com

And what would Christmas be without a special episode of our favorite Runescape buddies: Bob IRL and Meow.



And for your further enjoyment in the festive season, here is a special Runescape Christmas carol just for all our Runescape fans.



Here in Australia of course, we are expecting the usual hot weather for the Christmas season. No snowed in airports for us guys!


Image Source: http://media.rd.com

Actually we have it on pretty good authority that Santa will be taking a sunny post Christmas break right here in Australia.


Image Source: http://images.sodahead.com

And in our country, there will be no need for Santa to be sledding through ice with Reindeer either:


Image Source: http://www.guzer.com

That's not to say we don't love Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer, we just don't get to see him an awful lot.

We did however do some Googling to find out what Rudolph has been up to, and received this fairly disturbing news from YouTube.



We also found a very informative video all about how Rudolph did in fact end up with such a red nose.



Now we know some of you have left getting your the Christmas Lists to Santa till the last minute. But thanks to digital technology, the red suited man and his helpers have everything under control.


Image Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com

Now imagine Christmas originally happening in today's digital age. Here is an awesome video from YouTube that shows exactly what a modern Christmas would be like.



So to finish off, we know you'd all love to here just one more Christmas Carol.


Image Source: http://www.essentialtalent.com.au

So here is a joyous little Christmas song we found on YouTube.



As for Big Passy, he will be doing the traditional stuffing of his face with roasted turkey and oven baked vegetables. However, the truth is he would much rather enjoy a Japanese Bento Box with ample Wasabi as his preferred bill of fare.



So Merry Christmas everyone, and we might see you a couple of times before the New year.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi

Boys Get Ready For The Animation Games

Bikes games are considered as boys games. It can be played individually or with multiple partners. Thus you can enjoy these games with your friends also. When youngsters play bike games then they feel they are riding bike. Boys like this game as they love the speed and difficulties which appear on the way of reaching the target. This builds lot of excitement and craze among them. When we play racing games then we always have an intention to reach first which makes the game more thrilling and exciting.



Creators created these games to attract which everyone wishes to play it. Creators used excellent graphics as well as 3D and 2D animation in bikes games. They have used 3D effect in games in order to protect the eyes of the player. In fact they give superb background music in game. In the game, modification of bikes is really cool. Bike games give the option to choose attractive bikes from the selective options. In games locations are very attractive. They actually bring lots of excitement and originality in game.

Almost every guy is crazy about bikes. That is why bikes games attract them so much. Bike riding is a real passion of guys and they just love it. On internet you will get all kind of bike games. You just have to go through simple downloading process. Then what are you waiting for just access internet at home and download this fantastic game. and there are few bike games which can be played online too.

Scratch Programming 2

Click the green Flag to start the above Scratch Animation. Let it run through to completion.

This animation uses two picture characters, (or "Sprites"). They are the Duck and the Hippo.

We got the background image off the internet, saved it to our hard drive, and used Photoshop to get its size to be the standard required 480x360 pixels. We then clicked on the Background icon in Scratch, and imported it into our project.

The duck speaks just after the Hippo starts to take off and fly.
How we organise this in Scratch, is for the Duck to send a "Broadcast Message" which we can then get the Hippo to receive. (If you know Flash, then it is a bit like event listener programming in Flash Actionscript.)

It is through the broadcast message that we can sync up the duck and the hippo.

Here is the Scratch script for the Duck sprite:



When the hippo flys off the screen, the ends of his legs were staying stuck on the screen, and so we had to use the "hide" command to make him dissapear for a few seconds, and then we reset his position to be next to the duck, and then make him visible again.

Here is the Scratch script for the Hippo sprite:




Keeping Score

This next Scratch project is straight from the MIT "Keep Score" Scratch Card:



Note that we had to press "Record" on the Play Sound block, then use Import, but we could not find the "chomp" sound, so we used Effects > Pop sound instead.

We also added a blue "If on Edge Bounce" block because the Shark kept going off screen. In addition, we right clicked on each sprite, chose "Resize this Sprite", and made both fish smaller. We also named the Sprites as "smallfish" and "shark".

Here is the final script for the Shark:



We added some extra code so that the small fish would momentarily dissappear when hit by the shark, as well as some random number coding to make the small fish respawn at a different new location each time.

Here is the final script for the small fish:



To play the finished Scratch animation, click the top right hand corner green flag. To stop the game click the top right hand corner red dot stop sign.

Shark Versus Fish Game

Finally here is a far more sophisticated version of the Shark versus Fish game. This was made here at Passy World using some ideas from Shark Games that were found on the MIT website.

If you join up with the MIT site at http://scratch.mit.edu/ then you can create an account, search for Scratch Projects, and download the programming source scripts etc.

First of all the game has costume changes on the shark, so that it is chomping with its mouth the whole time it moves:



We then have scripting on the fish and Shark sprites so that after the shark eats the first fish, the fish starts cloning itself. The fish can then earn points if it can clone for a while without being eaten.

Each time it does get eaten, the clones erase, and the cloning recommences. The Game has a timer on it to have a total game time of 30 seconds.

Here is the scripting for the Shark:



Here is the scripting for the Fish:



And here is the finished game for you to enjoy playing. Click the green flag to start the game, and you then use the mouse to move the shark around chasing the fish. You have 30 seconds to win more points than the fish wins by cloning itself.

Note that there is a glitch when we play the game online through the HTML outside the Scratch Environment. What happens is that we don't get our final "say" messages from the Shark at the end of the game.

Sadly, we have not been able to find anyway to fix this end of game problem.
The same problem happens on the original Shark games that are on the MIT site.

So that completes another fun lesson on Scratch.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi