Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

RSNA Day 2

Day 2, and the meeting is in full swing. It's a full day of scientific sessions, talks, posters and trying to catch up with people at the technical exhibits.

Started off the morning spending an hour or so studying posters before heading off to my first refresher course of the day. It was a session on the benefits and rationale for lung cancer screening. Very interesting. We're one of the clinical sites for the National Lung Screening Trial, so I thought I had better learn something about it.

Then off to listen to some talks on detector physics. There was an interesting presentation on the integration and performance of an x-ray fluoro/MRI hybrid system. Neat, but I don't think there will be too many of these things around.

At lunch I met with my former Master's supervisor. RSNA is about the only opportunity I get to see him, so it's always good to get together again.

Spent some time cruising through the technical exhibits. Got a demo of Agfa's new v4.5 PACS workstation with the integrated 3D processing from Voxar. Pretty nifty stuff and easy to use. Generate lots of eye candy for referring physicians.

Late afternoon session was a series of talks on Cardiac CT physics. Mostly presentations about artifact reduction.

RSNA Day 3

Day 3. By about the 3rd or 4th day, most RSNA veterans are starting to get a little worn out from all the sensory overload and walking around. Most newbies are still a little overwhelmed and struggling to take in as much as possible.

This morning's refresher course session was on PET brain imaging. Lots of clinical info, and discussion about using isotopes other than F-18 for doing things like neuroreceptor imaging. Neat stuff with lots of potential.

The next late morning session was on PET/CT imaging. Quite a few people discussing the benefits of CT/PET over PET alone. But, as one audience member commented, most PET reading is already done with an accompanying CT/MRI scan.

One new thing at the Poster exhibits this year was the hour long Poster session talks each day. There were sessions for various topics, so you pick the topic you're interested in. You get a group of people gathering around a poster, and the author spends 5-7 minutes telling the group about their poster. Then you move on to the next poster. I rather liked this way of going through posters. Often you're studying the posters on your own, and there's no way of asking the author questions, short of leaving your card stuck to the poster.

Late afternoon science session was on CT dose. One interesting talk provided data on CT doses for head and abdomen studies from sites applying for ACR accreditation in CT.

The late afternoon refresher course I went to was Advanced Ultrasound imaging. It was mostly discussion on 3D and 4D ultrasound imaging technologies. Very cool. Ultrasound's come a long way in the past few years.

RSNA Day 4

It's my last day here at RSNA. It's a pretty light day, with scientific sessions just in the morning. That leaves my afternoon free to catch up on the technical exhibits.

This morning, I went to a refresher course on dual modality imaging and software based image registration. It was pretty interesting, and I learned a few very low-tech tips for doing image registration without needing expensive hybrid scanners or fiducial markers. Dual modality imaging (PET/SPECT CT in particular) is becoming an increasingly popular and valuable imaging method for diagnosing, especially for cases where the diagnosis from either modality is inconclusive.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the technical exhibits to check out some of the various offerings.

One new item was a (relatively) small corner called the RSNA Mobile Computing Pavillion. It was a collection of wireless, TabletPC, PDA and software vendors offering solutions for wireless and mobile computing in the radiology/healthcare environment. Got my first look at a TabletPC from Motion Computing. They're pretty neat devices. I'm tempted to get one for my wife instead of a laptop.

There are photos of my RSNA trip up on one of my photo galleries

Thank goodness for backups

Murphy's law strikes again. Go figure. The week the only two people who know anything about the server (I'm one of them) go away is when it dies. And die it did, sometime Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, after everyone had left for the holiday. As near as I can tell, something happened to the root file system. Restored data from backup, and it's partially OK, but it only boots off the floppy. Seems to be having some bootloader issues on the primary hard drive. Ugh. At least there was no significant data loss. Data was restored from a backup done on Tuesday.

So now there's a bunch of blogging that I had planned to do while I was away at RSNA that I'll have to do retroactively. Stay tuned.

A guide to surviving RSNA

After you've gone to 2 or 3 RSNA meetings, you pick up a few tips on getting around and surviving the 4-6 days you're there. So I thought I'd write about some of the things I've learned about RSNA survival.

Wear Comfortable shoes

Comfortable shoes are a must at RSNA. Your feet will be your primary mode of transportation, so forget fashion and forget looking good, unless you happen to enjoy having sore feet. At RSNA, you will do a lot of walking. You can easily cover a good 3-4 miles in a day just walking around McCormick Place, especially if you're wandering through the two technical exhibit halls. If you're not walking, you're standing and either talking to someone or studying something.

Pace yourself

There's a lot to see at RSNA, and if you try to do it all at once, you'll end up burning out and exhausted.

Go early, leave late

Most people try to arrive at McCormick around 8ish. The Technical exhibits open at 10. If you didn't get breakfast before McCormick, there's a McDonald's that offers pretty quick service, but lines quickly stretch outside the door after 7:30. The computer terminals also start getting crowded around 7:30-8. I like to arrive around 7, grab some breakfast at McD's maybe (about the only time I'll ever eat at McD's), check my mail (plenty of open terminals, so theren's no need to be rushed) and spend an hour or so studying some of the posters.
The Technical exhibits close at 5 PM, and that's about when the exodus from McCormick begins. That's also when the lines for the busses are the longest. You can easily spend 30-45 minutes standing in line just waiting for the bus. Instead of waiting in line, just head back to the poster exhibits and study a few more posters. Earn another hour of CE credits and then by the time you head back to the busses, the lines are gone and you'll be on the bus about the same time as you would have been if you waited.

Explore

Plenty of things to see and do, not only at RSNA, but in Chicago.

Dress Accordingly

Everyone seems to wear dark or black suits/clothes, especially the people working the technical exhibits. So, if you want to be inconspicuous and blend in, wear dark clothes. If you want to be distinctive, stand out and make it easy for others to find you, wear something colourful.

Leave your coat behind

You're walking around all day, and the last thing you want to do is be lugging around a heavy jacket all day. Yes, it's November, and Chicago is cold in November. But about the only time you're outside are the 5 seconds it takes to walk between your hotel lobby and the bus, and between the bus and McCormick Center. So, unless you have a nasty smoking habit (they make you go outside to smoke), the coat can be dispensed with. But if you insist on wearing one, there are coat checks where you can leave it. Then your only problem is remembering which coat check you left your coat at.

Leave your bag behind

Same advice goes for your bag/briefcase. All it will do is leave you with a sore and tired shoulder. If you happen to collect things through the day, there big roomy plastic bags available. Just grab one of those to hold your stuff in for the day.

Whale Rider

Watched a movie called Whale Rider last night. It's an nice movie about the classic themes of old ideas and traditions clashing with modern reality. On this occasion, the old ideas and traditions are those of the Maori. Good movie, good story, very nicely filmed.

Good bye inkjet, hello laser

We finally decided to dump our old Cannon BJC-210 and replaced it with an HP LaserJet 1012. Office Max had it on sale for $150, so we figured what the heck. It's a pretty sweet little printer. It's light, with a relatively small footprint.

Installation was a snap on WinXP. Pop the CD in, install the drivers, plug the printer into a free USB port and let Windows do it's magic. First page out in 10 seconds, 15 ppm, manual and auto feeders and 1200 dpi. It's only a simple B/W printer (2 bit greyscale), so the print quality isn't as great as something like a 4500. But for home use, print quality looks just fine. And 15 ppm sure beats the heck out of the 2 or 3 the old BJC used to do.

Printer configuration and diagnostics are done through a web interface and web server running on your computer. It's something that can be turned off though, if you're leary of an unknown webserver running on your system.

At $150, definitely a good deal if you're tired of that pokey slow inkjet.

Canadians != Americans

This comes from an article in the Edmonton section of Canada.com.

an American from San Diego is quoted saying: "What bugs me about Canadians, if I may, is that they wear that damn patch on their bags, the Canadian flag patch. That way, they differentiate themselves from us."

Here's another good one

"Some participants expressed a certain amount of annoyance at what is perceived as a systematic attempt by Canadians to make the statement that they are not Americans by sporting the maple leaf,"

Well, duh, that's because we aren't Americans. We're Canadians. And most of us are damn proud of it too.

It's an article about how Canadians should be more respectful of Americans' feelings when travelling abroad, because of how US foreign policy is making Americans feel isolated and unsupported in the world.

Now, I personally don't have anything against the US (maybe aside from their slightly arrogant outlook on the rest of the world). I work and live there, and I even married one. I just have no desire to become one, or to be labelled as one. I know it bugs many Canadians to no end when people try to lump Canadians and Americans into the same pot, or the endless jokes about Canada being the 52nd state. We put the maple leaf on our luggage so that we can be identified as Canadians.

Canadian, and very proud to be one.

Blogger evolution

Jeremy Wright has an interesting take on blogger evolution. I think on his scale, I'm somewhere around a familial blogger, although I don't think too many people have found my blog. I'm still pretty comfortable with what I write here though.

Battlestar Galactica. It was...different

There might be some spoilers here. I'll try to keep them to a minimum.

The SciFi adaptation of Battlestar Galactica is over. From the opening scene, I could almost hear the collective wail of agony from BG purists (if there is such a thing) out there.

I liked it.

Wail away BG purists. It's not like you didn't know it wasn't going to be a remake of the original series. It's not like SciFi and the creators didn't make it absolutely clear from the outset they weren't going to simply redo the original series with updated FX. They made it quite clear that they were going to rewrite from scratch. Oh, they kept a lot of things. The story concept and some of the ship designs remain. The characters have been largely rewritten and redeveloped. They don't resemble the characters from the original series at all. Cylons have advanced significantly.

It's different, more gritty and edgy than the original. The Cylongs are bigger and badder than ever. Characters are harder and more complex. Galactica, the Colonial flagship in the original series, is set to be decommissioned and destined to become a museum in the new series.

I liked the tributes to the original series they put in. There were exhibits in the museum-to-be' showing a Cylon and Cylon basestar from the original series. The Cylon ships have the red eye moving back and forth, as do the mechanical Cylons. The Vipers look mostly the same (all the fancy new ones get wiped out).

There were a few things I didn't like. The technology isn't quite as advanced as it was in the original series. Vipers shoot machine gun style, the Cylon ships launch missiles and attack with nuclear warheads. Galactica is kind of ugly looking, but I'm sure it will grow on me, just like the Enterprise-D did.

As just a 2 part mini-series, I didn't think it was long enough. I wanted more. But hopefully, more will come in the form of a series.

I wonder when/if the series will start.

Time for Christmas

The endless loop of Christmas music in my brain has started now, despite having avoided turning on the radio since before Thanksgiving. So I guess this means it's time for me to start getting ready for Christmas. Dragged the tree out, strung the lights and hung decorations on it. Working on Christmas cards now. And the Christmas baking has begun. Soon just about every available container in our kitchen will be stacked to overflowing with sugar cookies, destined to be shipped off to relatives.

Only a couple more weeks to go...

Friday Five

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
Love it. It's just not the holiday season without it.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
A holiday back home with friends and family.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
Nothing out of the ordinary.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
No.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
I have most everything I need, so there really isn't anything in particular that iI want at the moment. Although a Trek 1500 might be nice.

Which Tic-Tac Flavor Am I?

You are Spearmint.
You are quick-witted and sharp. You pay close
attention to details and you can tell what your
friends are feeling. You are always the first
to understand a joke and you are valued for
your insight and advice. However, you
sometimes isolate yourself from other people,
afraid to share your own feelings.
Most Compatible With: Cinnamon


Which Tic-Tac Flavor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Found at for3v3rzero

Christmas preparations

Christmas shopping is finished. Christmas cards are getting sent out. 2 batches of cookies done, 3 or 4 more to go (we get maybe about 250 cookies out of each 'batch'). People might be getting their cookies a little late this year, but oh well. I'm sure they'll enjoy them just the same.

Off to go finish off the rest of my cards.

The Face on Mars

APOD has a cool new picture of what that Face on Mars really looks like.

It still has a face-like appearance, although it does look like more of a natural, not artificially created structure.

The big high resolution version of the photo makes a really cool desktop background.

Matrix: Revolutions on IMAX

Matrix: Revolutions on IMAX is very, very cool. Big sound, big picture.

If you have the opportunity to go see it, I highly recommend it.

Stunning example of retrograde motion

More pretty pictures to look at from APOD.

This is a stunning image of retrograde motion of not one planet, but two planets!. Both Mars and Uranus are shown going through their motions.

Hawaiian shirts

Jay Allen's entry on hawaiian shirts reminded me of what my friends and I used to do during my undergrad (and graduate) days at U of A.

Our Friday ritual after class was to head up to RATT (Room At The Top), the bar on campus. Usually we'd head up there around noon or so, grab our usual table in the corner and have some lunch and hang out. The guys with afternoon classes would head off, and come back afterwards. Hawaiian shirts (bright and colourful ones) were standard dress on Fridays. Whoever forgot their's would be the scornpost for the remainder of the night. They made us very identifiable, and very easy to spot in a crowded bar. Also useful as an ice breaker for meeting girls. We became very well known for them. Sometimes, people would pass us by on campus and say "hey, it's the hawaiian shirt guys!".

We'd step off the elevator, head to our table and the waitress would meet us there with a couple of pitchers. Food orders would be placed, and the meeting would start.

People would come and go, and come back again. Much fun was had, much schmoozing and lawn mowing was done. Ahh, those were the days :)

Thanks sis!

Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for the great Christmas/birthday gifts, Salsas That Cook : Using Classic Salsas To Enliven Our Favorite Dishes, Casablanca (Two-Disc Special Edition) and Animatrix DVDs.

Can't wait to watch the DVDs and try out some new salsas!

Christmas baking is done!

10 pounds of flour, 7.5 pounds of butter, and about 4 pounds of sugar later, our baking is done. Now all that's left to do is package up the cookies and ship them off. Everyone will get their cookies late this year, but at least they taste good.

2003 Chart of the Nuclides

One of the coolest things (at least I thought so) I've ever had decorating my wall was a 3'x5' Chart of the Nuclides poster from 1976 or so. I had it posted on the wall above my desk, so that every time I looked up I could check out a different element. It was big, and packed a ton of information about each element into each box. It also doubled as a place for me to post Sticky notes. Had to leave it at home when I moved to the US, and I've been missing it ever since.

Just heard that the 2003 16th edition of the chart is now available for a really decent price. Only $25 for the wall chart or the book (the book is only $15 if you're a student).

Think I'll have to go place an order...

Ahh, what a weekend

Just back from a fantastic weekend getaway to Tampa Bay, FL. Something we had planned a few months ago, but with all the activity from the wife's final exams, and Christmas preparations, we had almost forgotten about it.

Spent the day at Busch Gardens on Saturday. Very cool place. Rode 4 roller coasters (Gwazi, Scorpion, Kumba, Montu), saw lots of animals, and even got to feed some giraffes. Missed the rhinos though.

What a great place. Can't wait to go back again. Go check out the photos at the gallery.

New MT version

Looks like while I was away, MovableType 2.65 was released. Since it contains a fix for a security issue, it's probably a good time to upgrade (or have your host provider upgrade)

MT style sheets

Oooh, now here's a promising site. Movable Style is a collection of different style sheets that can be used to customize the look of a Movable Type blog. There are the default styles, and a few interesting looking ones. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.

Friday Five, late but what the heck

Yeah, it's not Friday. Hey, I was on vacation on Friday.

Don't know if I can come up with 5 for all of these. I'll just list what I think of.

1. List your five favorite beverages.
Coke, Dad's Root Beer, orange juice, Big Rock Traditional Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale

2. List your five favorite websites.
In no particular order,
Slashdot.org
User Friendly
Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
Calvin and Hobbes
Science Daily

3. List your five favorite snack foods.
Corn nuts
M&Ms
Coffee Crisp
Old Dutch Ketchup potato chips
Chips Ahoy

4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
Hmm, don't really play too many board or card games anymore...
Risk
Magic: The Gathering

5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.
Unreal Tournament 2003
AD&D
Palladium
GURPS
Nethack

Petition for Coffee Crisp in the US!

Oh, this is delightful! Stumbled on this petition site to bring Coffee Crisp to the US. There are reports of Coffee Crisp sitings, news articles about the effort, and interesting stories about Coffee Crisp in peoples' lives. Sign the petition!

Away we go

Getting stuff ready to load up into the car so we can head off to the in-laws for the holidays. Holidays are always an interesting time at the in-laws. There's usually some kind of silliness or drama going on. Our role is mostly as the family caterer, which is just fine by us because it keeps us out of the way, and we can boss people around in the kitchen. Mostly we're telling people to get out of the kitchen though (at least while we're working in it).

A few years ago, the annual family gatherings (Thanksgiving and Christmas) kept growing and growing, until one year we were confronted with cooking for 40 people, when we only expected 25. 40 pounds of turkey disappeared with no leftovers in sight. After that, we drew the line and told the family we weren't cooking for that many people anymore. The next Thanksgiving they were on their own while we took in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York City (a very fun event, but many many people to deal with). Since then, the family gatherings have been much smaller and much more enjoyable.

So, I wonder what will happen this year...we're only expecting 14 or so for Christmas dinner.

The holiday aftermath

Christmas is over with, the endless loop of Christmas music on the radio is done, and life slowly returns to normal.

I think we've definitely made our contribution to the economy this holiday season. The last couple of months worth of credit card payments have all been pretty much undone with our holiday spending. That means my initial target date for getting one of our credit cards paid off is pushed back a few months. Well, at least we had fun with it :)

All in all, it was a good Christmas this year. Less drama this year (at least I think so...we were mostly busy with cooking). Smaller group over for Christmas this year, which made for a nicer event. Got some strange gifts though. Don't know what the heck we're going to do with a 2' tall wooden Nutcracker doll.

Hope all of you reading had as pleasant a Christmas as we did!

Another late Friday Five

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this year?
Making sure everything was in tip top shape for my part in DHEC and JCAHO inspections this year. May not seem like it, but it can be a lot of work making sure all the documentation is in order.

2. What was your biggest disappointment?
No really big disappointments. Maybe not taking that job at Duke University, but neither choice was a bad one for me to make.

3. What do you hope the new year brings?
More progress on the path to enlightenment, wherever that takes me.

4. Will you be making any New Year's resolutions? If yes, what will they be?
I usually try to avoid making resolutions.

5. What are your plans for New Year's Eve?
No plans yet. Maybe find a event or party to go to.

The ocean

What is it about the ocean that captivates people? All you see is endless water which makes you feel small and insignificant, which isn't something many people deal well with.

I grew up inland, never seeing a body of water much larger than a lake. Always thought it was nice, but never had any particular fascination with living near water. Even after visiting both coasts and wetting my feet in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, I never really thought much about the ocean.

But now, after living here for a few years, with the beach and ocean only a few minutes away and marsh in my back yard almost, I don't think I'd want to live inland again. I don't own a boat (nor do I really want to), and I don't surf or do any ocean related activities. I'm not sure what it is I like so much about the ocean. There's something about looking out onto the ocean and feeling the ocean breeze that just utterly captivates you. The waves come in onto the shore in a hypnotic rhythm, drawing my thoughts further out onto the water. And when I look closer, I see the sea birds gliding on the breeze, shore birds hopping around poking about in the sand for a morsel, or maybe a small crab scurrying about trying to avoid the birds. There are people surfing on the water, others wading in the water close to the beach, or lying on the sand. Looking even closer, there are shells, sometimes jelly fish remains being picked over by the occasional bird, or the broken shell of a small crab. Sand packed hard by the water gives way to softer drier sand. Even closer, are the tiny grains of sand rushing up and down the beach, pushed by the waves. Windblown grains of sand drift over the beach and cover my feet.

All this and more for anyone to discover. Maybe that's why I don't want to leave.

LOTR:TTT

One of my Christmas gifts was the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended DVD (to go with the first one). So for the past 3 days, we've been watching a good 9 hours of Lord of the Rings and the behind the scenes stuff.

It's an astounding DVD set, like the first one, but I think they've managed to pack even more stuff into this 2nd extended DVD set. Just like the first extended DVD set, the two appendix DVDs with behind the scenes stuff was fascinating to watch, and really adds a lot of insight into how the film was made, and the decisions the directors and writers made about adapting the book to film.

I don't think there are very many people who are disappointed with Peter Jackson's adaptation to film of Tolkien's great work. This is one of the few film adaptations of a book that's given me a greater appreciation of the book, and where you don't mind the visual imagery from the film interfering with what you read in the book.

Resurrect or replace my PDA

The touch screen on my Visor Platinum is starting to flake out on me. Taps on the left side of the screen bounce wildly about, making it difficult to use. My wife gave it to me for Christmas about two years ago, and it's served me well since then. So, do I take this opportunity to shell out more money to replace it with a new and improved PalmOS 5 model (I'm kind of digging the Palm's T3), or go the much cheaper route and just buy a replacement screen.

I like my Platinum, and have grown attached to it. With the Memplug and 64 MB card, I have plenty of space to hold stuff. My trusty Stowaway lets me write and enter data quickly.

I'll probably just replace the screen, because after Christmas, we're pretty tapped out at the moment. Or I might be tempted with a refurb from Handspring. They've got some pretty good deals going on there.

First I think I'll take it apart and see if reseating the cables helps.