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Archive: December 2, 2024
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 Kottke links a great video, "Wanderers", narrated by Carl Sagan: "a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and how it might appear to us if we were there." Excellent.
Bertalan Mesko: IBM Watson is the stethoscope of the 21st century. "If AI can improve a chess player, it can improve a physician as well." IBM have been casting about for commercial applications where Watson delivers value; expert decision support like advising physicians seems to be one of them. Onward! 
This is quite amazing: "In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT’s are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is." So, is the problem the schools, the parents, or the students themselves? Well... "the Paterson school district said that they no longer use SAT scores to gauge students’ success."
 In response to the announcement that the next America's Cup competition will take place in Bermuda (despite the current victors Team Oracle are from America), the Horse's Mouth notes "my gosh, there's no place to sail in the USA". I think Bermuda is a perfectly fine venue, but watching those cats scream across San Francisco Bay in the last 'Cup was pretty cool.
 I just recently had a chance to see "The Theory of Everything", the new movie out about Stephen Hawking (it's pretty good ... worth the watch), and so found this story most interesting: Giving Stephen Hawking a Voice. Incredible that he was able to write books only by moving a muscle in his cheek.
Well I guess we knew this: Attending meetings lowers IQ. One of the great things about running a cool little startup is that we have very few meetings.
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Archive: December 2, 2013
Archive: December 2, 2012
Archive: December 2, 2011
Archive: December 2, 2010
Archive: December 2, 2009
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This past Monday and Tuesday I made my annual pilgrimage to the RSNA show in Chicago (Radiological Society of North America). This huge conference features about 50,000 attendees and nearly 1,000 exhibiting companies in the largest medical imaging show in the world. Some of the larger exhibitors have city-block-sized booths with hundreds of employees, including bars and restaurants, conference rooms, presentation theaters, and all kinds of state-of-the-art medical imaging equipment.
Digital Pathology isn’t a big deal at this show – yet – but many of the Radiology imaging companies are aware of digital pathology and some of them have even begun their own product development, such as GE and Philips. It is always interesting to go and see what the industry is doing, and especially to compare what has changed year-over-year. Of course one of the biggest changes this year was that the whole show was scaled back; most companies plan their presence at the show a year in advance, and given the economic downturn at the end of last year, booked smaller spaces for this year. As a result the overall square footage of exhibitors was less than in years past, and somewhat less spectacular. It is still an amazing showcase.
What follows are a few notes and pictures from the show (please click any picture to enlarge)…
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 Welcome indeed! RSNA, just like I pictured it.
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 McCormick Center Grand Concourse never fails to impress.
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 Good to know.
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 The show is smaller this year, but not small; as always the sea of booths is amazing.
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 GE has a smaller presence, but not small; they still have a city-block-sized booth. This year their theme is "healthy imagination".
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 Toshiba's presence is as large as ever.
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 ... exhibit booths stretch off into the distance ...
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 ... in every direction ...
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 A meeting with Stephen Willaert of Barco. They use Aperio's ImageScope viewer to demonstrate their 3840 x 2400 pixel 800 lumen 16-bit color 30" display. Cool!
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 I like this Hologic navigation pad. Something like this dedicated to digital pathology reviewing would be great.
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 Okay, time for a walk around the hall!
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 GE Healthcare - here we go...
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 Very cool projection screen. The display technology for exhibits keeps getting better.
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 If this RSNA had a theme, ''women's healthcare'' was it. Featured everywhere...
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 GE is definitely in the imaging hardware business. Note FDA 510(k) pending sign.
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 Inside GE's innovation pavilion. Omnyx were exhibiting their digital pathology system here. I managed to get myself kicked out :)
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 Check out this display. Amazing. Would be great for reviewing slides!
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 Healthcare IT is an increasingly big emphasis for GE
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 Hitachi has some amazing MRI machines.
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 Invivo, another MRI vendor. I like their ''private'' meeting room.
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 Nuance - a speech-to-text company. A few too many concurrent messages in this display, I think.
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 Bracco had a huge booth. Among other things, have software for *improving* image quality.
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 Vital Images - 3D workstations. Had a nice meeting with them, they're expanding into other 'ologies' and have a nice 3rd party API.
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 Hitachi's presence was scaled back this year. Note empty carpet areas.
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 IHE is an initative sponsored by NEMA (the DICOM people) to demonstrate inter-operabilty between vendors.
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 Thinking Systems - CAD solutions (pattern recognition). I love the 256 processor activity map (displayed between the people in the foreground).
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 As usual remote MRI trucks on display, but this year a focus on breast cancer.
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 Konica Minolta had their usual array of amazing digital radiology machines.
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 Varian - emphasis on software solutions for *Oncologists*
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 One of the more interesting and different booth designs...
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 NightHawk - outsourced radiology services - their presence has expanded
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 NightRays - lots of other companies are in the ''Nighthawk'' business now also.
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 Imaging on call - customized teleradiology (aka outsourced :)
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 Fuji has had the same booth for years, but still big and impressive.
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 These photomultiplier tubes from a Chinese company are like fine sculpture. Also would make a great chess set :)
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 The huge Toshiba booth was packed. Now featuring women's health prominently.
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 Toshiba's industrial design is awesome!
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 biospace - X-Ray machines you can stand in! Whole body images, cool.
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 DR Systems - a San Diego -based PACS company, we might work together...
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 Merge Healthcare - a company or an imperative? Huge presence as always...
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 Quantum digital radiology systems - note emphasis on 'made in U.S.A.'...
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 Cerner has a huge presence, primarily featuring HIS and RIS solutions.
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 Sentinelle featured a lot of pink-colored devices, saw that a lot...
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 Pink was definitely in vogue at this show, even pharmas like Bayer got into it.
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 Shimadzu's mobile digital X-ray machine, compact and cool.
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 Medrad is a PACS company moving into EHR.
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 Brit Systems - best penguins at the show :)
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 Digrad makes 'test phantoms'; targets used for calibrating digital radiology systems. Perhaps there will be 'test phantoms' for digital pathology too some day...
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 Bard - handheld breast core biopsy devices. These are used to create the needles analyzed by our customers.
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 Carestream had a strong entry into the 'lifelike display' sweepstakes, wow. 32 monitors stitched together.
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 Imris systems for neurosurgery - imaging and surgery on one table.
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 TeraRecon sells systems which manage radiology imaging workflow.
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 An increasing number of Asian firms exhibit at RSNA, including many from Korea...
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 Canon had their usual large presence; they make components for other vendors.
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 Philips had a HUGE exhibit area, with lots of cool 9-panel displays.
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 Philips' industrial design is pretty cool. Note new message: ''people focused healthcare''.
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 Philips had an interesting ''workflow pavilion'' with maps showing how their products integrate. Nicely done.
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 SonoScape - a Chinese ultrasound vendor.
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 Amicas is a leading EHR vendor; always like this poster at their booth...
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 The Agfa city. They'll take you there (wherever 'there' is :) ...
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 ... especially if 'there' is image-enabled EHR. They need Aperio for digital pathology :)
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 McKesson had a somewhat scaled back presence, booth was full of people. Interesting new tagline: 'take financial control'.
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 Sony has radiology solutions, and entered the 'huge lifelike display' contest with a strong entry...
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 Virtual Radiologic's teleradiology booth seemed scaled back from previous years.
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 Dalsa - Camera vendor (!) and also make digital X-ray panels.
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 Time to cross the bridge to the Lakeside Plaza... no shortage of attendees.
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 ... keep going straight through the RSNA administrative booths ...
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 ... and there's Lake Michigan! Calm and clear today.
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 This year the Lakeside Center had exhibitors also, instead of a big CME area.
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 The winner, largest display - Siemens. Their huge booth had a huge monitor running from one end...
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 ... to the other.
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 Siemens tagline: 'images, my way.'
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 Covidien is one of the leaders in FNA equipment.
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 Sectra - another company focused on women's health.
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 The inner guts of an MRI - very cool. The rollers have to conduct power into the rotating center.
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 Quest International - support for imaging monitors. And they have a pretty big one of their own!
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 Hologic turned pink for the show as well...
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 ... they seem to be marketing to patients as well as to hospitals.
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 A sobering reminder of what RSNA is all about.
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 Always the coolest part of visiting McCormick Center - the programmed water fountains :)
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 And the coolest part of attending RSNA in Chicago is always... Michigan Avenue, dressed for Christmas!
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Every year RSNA gets a little more interesting for Digital Pathology; wonder what it will be like next year? Stay tuned...
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A filter pass made while flying from Houston back to L.A... (offline, will be posted when I land :) It has been a great trip so far, with my annual visit to RSNA, and a great meeting with an impressive customer this morning (wow! was it only this morning?) And now on to L.A, a late dinner in Encinitas, and then... my birthday! The big Five-one, which does not feel big at all; and I've switched to hex anyway so it is 33 :)
 Dinner report: Sepia, in Chicago was amazing... pictured at left, flat iron steak, bone marrow beignets, braised greens, w Callejo Ribera del Duero and of course my trusty Kindle, serving up Nine Dragons. It doesn't get better.
So Monday was "Cyber Monday" - did you do any shopping online? I didn't, but I think maybe I was the only one; I heard that 96M people bought something, 4% from smartphones. Cool.
Apparently Amazon "won", with a 44% year-over-year increase.
 This is clever; The Sun celebrate their 40th anniversary with iPhone-like ads. When you look at it this way, a newspaper really does have some advantages. I particularly liked the emphasis on speed; once you have on in hand, there is literally no waiting for content.
Stephen Baker, blogger at Blogspotting for BusinessWeek, is moving to TheNumerati. Adjust your bookmarks. I guess having bloggers was an interesting experiment for BW, but they found there is no money in blogging. Sorry :) It is fun though!
 Square looks really cool; a new payment services which uses a small [square] peripheral to read credit cards and converts their contents into sound, which can be used by any device with an audio input jack. Clever. I'm not sure credit cards will be with us long term - phones themselves will probably replace them - but for now, this is a good way to replace cash with debit cards.
 From Slate: Slap on a pink ribbon, call it a day. "That little loop seems to have replaced real feminism, which is why women's health priorities are so screwed up." I will say, having just attended RSNA, that awareness of breast cancer is at an all-time high. Which might be more important than "real feminism".
 Amazing photos of Dubai in decline. Wow, that bubble has burst at last. [ via kottke ]
The biggest story of 2009? The rise of the virtual newsroom. I'm not even sure it's really a 2009 story, but definitely it has become apparent this year that the virtual army of amateurs is out-executing the mainstream media. I think going into the tank for Obama in 2007-08 was really the MSM's shark jump...
I like this, from David Pescovitz: "Beschizza's Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced reality is indistinguishable from Photoshop.'" Just wait 'till we have augmented reality, then the line will really blur.
Related; I like Paul Spinrad's idea for an opening title sequence: The following titles fade in and are crossed out one by one:
A True Story
Based On A True Story
Inspired By A True Story
Inspired By Real Events
Inspired By Reality
- Partially Inspired By Reality
This could totally describe my blog!
Picture of the day, this amazing sunset from Jason Weisberger. In me it inspires a feeling of serene peace. Please enjoy!
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... left on my desk by a friend ...
I like it
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Archive: December 2, 2008
Archive: December 2, 2007
Archive: December 2, 2006
Archive: December 2, 2005
Archive: December 2, 2004
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 Yesterday I wondered "What's the best way to build desktop software for a Mac?" I got a lot of feedback - thanks - and the consensus was: Use Apple's Xcode IDE, develop for the Cocoa environment (present-day version of NextStep), and program using the Objective-C language. Apparently there is no direct equivalent to ActiveX but you can build Objective-C components which can be incorporated into multiple programs. So be it. Thanks especially to Mark Wrenn and Gary Lang.
Right now I have an "original lamp" iMac as my development machine, running OS 10.3 ("Panther"); upgrading to newer hardware might be a first step. I'm not as worried about the machine's speed as I am about the 1024x768 screen resolution; I'm pretty spoiled by the 21" 1600x1200 monitor I use with my PC. Is there any way to hook an external monitor to an iMac? Or maybe I run an Xwindows server on my PC and connect to the Mac (I've heard good things about Exceed)?
I'll be traveling down this road - stay tuned for updates...
[ Later: The 'net is awesome. So I post this to my blog, check my referer log, and find this thread, which links to this helpful article about porting from Win32 to Mac OS X. Excellent! ]
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[ via Dungis, thanks, Julien ]
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Archive: December 2, 2003
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Shirley and I have some parties coming up - my birthday, a dinner party, and an open house - and so we have to pick wines. I visited our local cheaper-than-dirt wine distributor (Wade's Wines), and picked eight possible chardonnays, in the range $5-$30 per bottle. I also threw in a known-to-be-good $50 bottle for comparison, and we did a blind tasting. Hey, it's hard work throwing parties :)
Tasting Chardonnay Blind
The results were amazing. I totally mis-called which wines I thought I'd like. My personal favorite going in was the 2001 Forman ($30), which ended up dead last. This is why you have to taste blind.
Remarkably, Shirley and I had similar tasting notes. We both found one wine to be the clear pick of the bunch - the 2001 Peters ($25). I promise you, this is a great Chardonnay. Our third favorite was a South African wine, the 2002 Graham Beck, which at $9 is a great bottle. And the cheapest wine of the bunch, the 1997 Chateau Woltner ($5), finished a respectable sixth, ahead of the expensive "benchmark", the 2000 Kistler ($50).
Here are the results, your mileage may vary:
- 2001 Peters Family, Napa Valley ($25)
Rich and smooth, with a wonderful nose and long vanilla finish. What can I say, this was a great Chardonnay. Yum!
- 1999 Thunder Mountain, Napa Valley ($20)
Lighter than the Peters, but very sound. Nicely balanced with full body. Shirley thought it would be better with food than by itself.
- 2000 Graham Beck, South Africa ($9)
A delightful surprise, nice and smooth, with full rich flavor. Kind of an exotic finish. It is always fun to find an inexpensive wine from "somewhere else" which is such a delight.
- 2000 Gary Farrel, Alexander Valley ($25)
A rich buttery chard, maybe a little unbalanced. Great nose. Gary Farrel is pretty reliable, and this was really nice. Plus, they have beautiful labels.
- 2001 Muir Hanna Estate, Napa Valley ($20)
Austere and complex, a little dry, but overall nicely balanced. Nice nose with a slightly bitter finish. This grew on me, I rated it higher on each pass. Maybe needed more time to air out...
- 1997 Chateau Woltner, Napa Valley ($5)
A lighter wine, clean and smooth and dry. Not rich enough to stand up to food, but a nice "sitting around and drinking" wine. And at this price, get a few cases!
- 2000 Kistler Les Noisetiers, Napa Valley ($50)
Probably not ready, seemed unbalanced and dull. Not much nose and slightly bitter finish. I'm a big fan of Kistler, this was a disappointment. Might be better later but so what.
- 2000 Muir Hanna Estate, Napa Valley ($20)
Thin and grassy, too much citrus. Lemon nose, weak finish. Way worse than the '01, not even remotely the same.
- 2001 Forman, Napa Valley ($30)
Just completely disappointing, thin, acidy, and unbalanced. Bitter finish. I picked Forman to win based on past history, but so be it. That's why you taste.
If you want to try this at home, here's how you do it. Person A uncorks the bottles, and wraps them in foil. Each bottle is given a letter (via a little sticky note), and Person A writes down the names of the wines and their letters. Next fold the paper so only the letters are visible. Then Person B removes the letter labels and at random assigns each bottle a number (via a little sticky note), writing each bottle's number next to the letter it replaced. Now you taste, and each person makes notes on the bottles by their numbers. Neither person knows which bottle goes with which number.
Some people like to compare notes as they compare wines. Shirley and I typically each make a pass without sharing our thoughts with each other, then make a second pass comparing notes.
Remember to have crackers, bland cheese, bread, and water handy for "cleansing the palate". Each person needs several glasses for comparison purposes. And remember you don't have to drink a lot! You can taste wines without swallowing... Of course you can, if you want to. Somehow our favorite, the 2001 Peters, was nearly gone by the time we were done.
Tasting Chardonnay, the unveiling...
Yeah, it's hard work, but somebody has to do it :)
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Bad things happening on my hard drive, I'm crossing my fingers and performing other pagan rituals...
A couple of visitors suggested gently that I was out of my mind for agreeing with godless' thoughts on fashion. The gist of their objection was that it is bad to judge women by their external beauty, and shallow to consider overweight women ugly. Hey, it is what it is. Bad or good, men judge women by their beauty, and shallow or deep, overweight women are unattractive. Deal with it.
Cory Doctorow considers the "Analog Hole", and big media's efforts to plug it. "The second section [of the MPAA's Content Protection Status Report], 'Plugging the Analog Hole,' reveals Hollywood's plan to turn a generic technology component, the humble analog-to-digital converter, into a device that is subject to the kind of regulation heretofore reserved for Schedule A narcotics." Not good. I can't believe these people actually believe they can put the digital genie back in the bottle. [ via John Robb ]
YAMPA, from Wired. (Yet another micropayments article.) Will BitPass and PepperCoin supplant PayPal. No. The way is shut.
Joel Spolsky hits another nail on the head: Craftsmanship. "It comes down to an attribute of software that most people think of as craftsmanship. When software is built by a true craftsman, all the screws line up." This is what I strive for, every day. Lining up those screw heads...
 At Slashdot a post linked this Christies auction of a 2,000 year-old 20-sided die, known to D&D gamers as a "D20". This is an icosahedran, a regular solid with 20 equilateral triangular faces. These fascinating objects have five-fold symmetry with edges forming regular pentagons. So I have to ask - what is the plane section with the greatest area?
Scoble discusses the state of Tablet PCs. "I think the problem is that most people buy on screen size and quality and the truth is that Tablets look weak when compared to a 15-inch high resolution monitor." That nails it for me. Give me a high-resolution screen (like that found on my laptop), and sure, I'd be interested. In 2003 nobody settles for 1024x768 anymore.
Matt Haughey reviews the Gateway connected DVD Player. "Overall, I'd rate this unit very highly as a capable network media device. With a simple setup and easy operation, it was painless to use all the files from my PC on my home entertainment center over the wireless network." There are going to be more and more of these things, until finally a network connection becomes a must-have feature.
And a big part of every home will be their media server. The Mirra is out, billed as the "first truly personal server". Among other things, it can be set to automatically backup and synchronize files from all the computers in your house. I wish I had this :
Here's a cool new group blog: Blogging L.A. No RSS feed, yet. [ via Xeni Jardin, who comments "and then, in an unguarded moment, they loosened their standards and let me in" ]
 Wired thinks Secret Energy Haunts Coral Castle. Check out the Coral Castle website. A friend who's seen it firsthand says it really is pretty amazing, especially the 25' lensless Polaris telescope, constructed from a 30-ton coral slab (see pic at right). Even if it wasn't done with some secret energy source :)
I'll leave you with the Wired Geek Gift Guide. A lot of terrific stuff here, for the geek on your list, or if you happen to be a geek, for your own list!
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