How to Display An Image Inline in Gmail?

As most of the Gmail users may have realized, Gmail does not have the ability to send inline images in the body of email because it does not support HTML formatting. Sometimes, to get our messages delivered in a more meaningful and colorful way, an attachment is definitely less effective than an inline image.

So how to make it in Gmail? Here is a trick for you.

First upload your images to Flickr (sign up an account if you aren’t a Flickr user). Set the privacy to Public.

Then download and install the social web browser, Flock.

Launch Flock and go to one of its homepages “My World”. Go to Friend Activity and click Flickr. You’ll be directed to the website. Log in and choose the image you wish to insert. 

There is an option bar appear on top of the image. Click Blog as if you’re going to write a blog entry. You’ll be asked to set up a blog account. You can ignore it (if you don’t plan to) by clicking Continue.

 

A blog editor containing your selected image will pop up. Now open a new tab in Flock and go to your Gmail account. Drag the image from the blog editor window to your Gmail message box.

Complete your email and send it. Your recipient will get your inline image mail like this:

Well, it does not seem a good solution but if you can’t find any, it is nevertheless an useful solution to embed image in Gmail rather than attaching it as a separate file. Other suggestions are welcome.

Star Fruit Intoxication

I received a forward email from friend a week ago informing how harmful star fruit is that it can kill! Here is the email content:

Star Fruit Can Kill

Goes by another name….carambola

This fruit can end your life!

This is not an April Fool Joke. But a stern reminder to all my readers. We were advised to have a few servings of fruits a day in order to reap the benefits of fruits right? But obviously this is one big no-no fruit to be excluded from your fruity feast!

In Shenzen, more than 10 people who consumes the star fruit had died. And now a 66-year-old, Malaysian who has been suffering from kidney ailment fell into coma after eating the start fruits. Yes, all it takes is one fruit or 100ml of its juice and the ordinarily harmless star fruit transforms poison in a matter of hours for kidney patients. So does this mean, people without kidney problems should be fine with star fruit! My take: Not at all! Prevention is better right?

Universiti Malaya Medical Centre consultant nephrologist said that star fruits contain a neurotoxin which is not present in other fruits. It affects the brain and nerves. In healthy persons, the kidneys filter it out. But for those with kidney problems, this potent toxin cannot be removed and will worsen the consumers’ conditions.

The symptoms of start fruit poisoning include:

~Hiccups

~Numbness and weakness

~Feeling confused

~Agitation

~Epileptic fits

The risk of death is high if you are having kidney ailments! But healthy individuals should beware of this fruit’s potential toxin too. It could also cripple your vitality if you are not lucky. So don’t take it for granted. It’s better to avoid them. Please pass this news to others.

My first response to it, could it be a hoax? However doubtful, I searched from the Internet and found the original news report. Well, despite of the fact of star fruit intoxication, I can see some other information have been twisted by the person who produced the above article. Often, I hold some disbelief to this kind of forward email concerning health issues because of the way people deliver or spread the information. Some are apparently questionable and at some point misleading but people still ignorantly spread it without think. 

Anyway, back to the topic, this issue did spark my interest so I decided to research more about it.

Star fruit (carambola) is indeed harmful and can be life-threatening to patients who have kidney dysfunctions particularly uraemia. Common symptoms encountered by uraemic patients after star fruit ingestion are:

• persistent and intractable hiccups
• vomiting
• disturbed consciousness of variable degrees (mental confusion, psychomotor agitation)
• decreased muscle power
• limb numbness, paresis and paresthesia
• insomnia
• seizure
• hypertension
• convulsion

According to the experts, as little as one half of the fruit can lead to the symptoms. The time from ingestion to onset of symptoms ranged from 30 minutes to several hours and in some severe intoxication cases, death resulted.

It is said that these symptoms are caused by the oxalic acid and a kind of neurotoxin contained in the star fruit. However, the claim of oxalic acid being problematic in this case is controversial as the other foods that contain higher level of oxalic acid such as spinach do not seem to cause the symptoms. Brazilian researchers Carolino et al. (2003) have proven that the AcTx, a neurotoxic compound found in star fruit, is causal to the convulsion after ingestion. For people with normal kidneys, this compound can be excreted from the blood quickly and thus they do not suffer from its effect when a reasonable portion of the fruit is consumed.

Medical treatment for star fruit intoxication is kidney dialysis. Interestingly, Neto et al. (2003) who studied the intoxication in 32 uraemic patients found those who were promptly treated with hemodialysis (HD), recovered without sequelae; those who were untreated or treated with other form of dialysis, peritoneal dialysis (PD), unfortunately did not survive.

There are always rebound effects after dialysis such as persistent hiccups and consciousness disturbance. One remarkable case study as described in Neto’s research is about a 25-year-old female uraemic patient who initially developed hiccups after consuming a star fruit. The condition was worsened after she consumed another 4 star fruits few hours later and she even vomited. She then received 2 hours of hemodialysis and the symptoms disappeared one hour after the dialysis. However, she suffered from intractable hiccups 2 hours later and the condition persisted until the next day, when she was again treated with 4 hours of hemodialysis. The hiccups were stopped but that was not the end of the story yet. When she returned home, the hiccups started again and caused her a sleepless night although she experienced 10 minutes intervals that were free of symptoms. The following morning she went through another 4 hours of hemodialysis but the hiccups continued to haunt her when she was at home. Good thing was the 10 mins hiccup-free intervals had extended. The hiccups finally disappeared after she received one more 4-hours dialysis and no sequelae has been reported afterwards. Overall, it took 14 hours of dialysis to end her nightmare. Dreadful isn’t it?

Therefore, it’s highly advisable for kidney patients to avoid eating star fruit. While people with normal kidneys have no problem with the star fruit intoxication, do beware of over consumption. My point of view is, it is unnecessary to completely shut your door to the fruit. You still can enjoy it but always keep one rule of thumb in mind: moderation is the key. And that applies to whatever you eat.

 

Oops, running out of HD space in Boot Camp Windows partition?

Few weeks ago I faced a problem of disk space shortage when I needed to install the space-consuming MATLAB in my Mac’s Boot Camp Windows. As I checked out the free space available in the Boot Camp partition, oops, there remained only few hundreds MB. Oh no, I seriously don’t like all the troubles of backing up all data and reinstall everything from A to Z after readjusting the Boot Camp partition size. It seems I have to get through all these huh?

If you have the same concern as mine, read on. Here’s a solution that can save you all the troubles.

First spend a few seconds on Google to find your saviour, the Winclone.

Download and install it. You can start your backup, repartition, and restoration in ease right away. Wait a minute, check out what is your Windows filesystem before you leap. If it’s is FAT32, then you need to first convert it to NTFS before you can increase the size of your Windows partition. Otherwise no matter how much larger you’ve resized your partition, it will just shrink to match the size of your original partition.

 

How to convert FAT32 to NTFS?

 

1. In Windows, first go to My Computer and choose the drive you wish to convert. Right click on the drive icon and go to Properties. Make sure you know the drive letter (such as ‘C’ for C drive) and the drive’s volume label.



2. Go to Start>Run and type cmd and click OK. The command prompt will appear.



3. In command prompt, type convert [drive letter]: /fs:ntfs    (for example, convert C: /fs:ntfs). Press Enter.



4. Next you’ll be prompted to key in the volume label for your drive. (Don’t type Alliraph, that’s my drive’s volume label, not yours.)
5. You’ll be asked to if you would like to force a dismount on the drive (Y/N). Type Y and press Enter.
6. Since the drive contains the operating system, conversion cannot be done immediately. Type Y and press Enter again so that the conversion will be scheduled the next time the system restarts.
7. Now reboot your Windows and let your computer take over the job. You can go have a cup of coffee while the filesystem is being converted.
8. The conversion is done. You may want to confirm it by going to the drive’s Properties again. You should see the filesystem is now NTFS.

Now let’s go back to Mac OS X. Run Winclone. At Image, choose the source that you wish to create the image, which is your Windows partition. Click Image…

Go to Boot Camp Assistance, remove your Windows partition and restore the disk to a single-partition Mac OS X volume. Click Restore.

Then, create a new partition of your Windows. Set the size of your partitions as desired.

When the partitioning is done, go back to Winclone>Restore, select the Windows partition image you just created a while ago. Select your new Boot Camp partition as the destination and click Restore. Winclone will restore your operating system and data onto the new partition. 

Congratulations! Your Windows is back with larger size of disk space. The entire setup is such a breeze isn’t it?