Take aim!

Looks like Frances is going to be taking a bead towards central Florida, although I won't feel like we're out of the woods yet for a couple more days. We had planned to evacuate out to Atlanta for the weekend, but now it seems that will probably be a bit too early.

From the 11 AM 1-SEP-04 NHC discussion:

THE SUBTROPICAL RIDGE CONTROLLING THE MOTION OF FRANCES IS FORECAST TO PERSIST BUT TO WEAKEN. THIS WOULD ALLOW THE HURRICANE TO TURN MORE TO THE WEST-NORTHWEST AND NORTHWEST WITH A DECREASE IN FORWARD SPEED. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE PREVIOUS ONE...AND BASICALLY FOLLOWS THE GLOBAL MODEL CONSENSUS. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST BRINGS THE CORE OF THE HURRICANE NEAR THE FLORIDA EAST COAST WITHIN 3 DAYS.

Getting things done in health care

A friend of mine at work received a page today that made me think about how things get done and how to get people to do things in health care. The page was from a nurse manager, and was a complaint about the web based image viewing system not working and how it was affecting patient care.

And there it was, the two magic words: patient care. As anybody who works in a hospital will tell you, you can get just about anything if you mention that patient care is involved. Need to buy or replace a piece of equipment? Just say that it's required for patient care. Trying to get someone to do something? Mention how the job not getting done is having an adverse effect on patient care. Need something fixed? It's affecting patient care. Got your eye on some space and want to kick the current occupants out? "We need that space to make patient care more efficient." And the list goes on.

Of course, it doesn't work everywhere, and there are a lot of areas in the hospital that aren't directly related to patient care. So bring up environment of care. "It's necesary to maintain/establish/promote a good environment of care."

Patient care, that's what it's all about. And it makes people jump.

If Jim Cantore is in Daytona, it's time to leave

Yesterday a couple of local radio guys were joking about how if Jim Cantore from the Weathr Channel showed up on Folly Beach, then it's time to get out. He always seems to go where the weather is going to be the worst. But if Mike Seidel showed up, then it was probably OK.

The latest 11 AM discussion from the NHC makes a Florida landfall in a couple of days more probable The wife has a notion that Frances will decide to skirt the coast, so our preparations continue.

GFS...AND GFDL MODELS HAVE SHIFTED THEIR TRACKS A LITTLE TO THE WEST AND ARE NOW IN BETTER AGREEMENT WITH THE OTHER DYNAMICAL MODELS. NOW THAT THE RELIABLE GFS AND GFDL ARE IN AGREEMENT WITH THE OTHER MODELS...THE CONFIDENCE IN THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS HIGHER. FRANCES IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST OR 295 DEGREES AT 11 KNOTS AROUND THE PERIPHERY OF THE SUBTROPICAL RIDGE. ALL MODELS ARE HOLDING THE RIDGE STRONG AND LONG ENOUGH TO KEEP THE HURRICANE ON A WEST-NORTHWEST TO NORTHWEST TRACK WITH A DECREASE IN FORWARD SPEED. THIS TRACK WOULD BRING THE CORE OF THE HURRICANE NEAR THE EAST COAST OF FLORIDA IN ABOUT 48 HOURS OR SO. BECAUSE FRANCES HAS A LARGE WIND FIELD AND THE TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO REACH THE COAST MUCH EARLIER THAN THE EYE.

Frances by satellite

From the NOAA Environmental Visualization Program (via today's APOD) is a very cool photograph of Frances taken yesterday morning by the GOES-12 satellite. It shows very impressively just how big the Frances really is.

And on the heels of Frances comes TS Ivan, which so far looks to be taking a more westward track than Frances did. This will be yet another one for people to watch and keep an eye on.

It's big, it's blue, it's a Dell!

After 5 years of limping along using an old Dell Latitude P120 laptop at work, (actually I haven't even used it all that much ever since getting a PDA and keyboard), I was finally able to get work to buy me a new laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 5150 (most everything around here is a Dell...hard to buy anything but Dell), and it's pretty sweet. Running at 1400x1050, it feels like there's hectares of screen space. Takes some time to move the mouse around the screen with the touch pad though. I'm looking forward to experimenting with interfacing the laptop with some of my meters to expedite the data collection process. All I need to do is find a Serial to USB cable and I'll be set.

Where will Ivan go?

Well, thankfully Frances has weakened somewhat and won't significantly impact us here, but that means Florida will take most of the impact, which is bad considering what Charley did a couple of weeks ago.

Now the next thing to think about is Ivan, which will probably be another big storm coming in the next 7-10 days.

T3 battery hacks

One of the chief complaints about the T3 is the dismal battery life. It's the 400 MHz processor and the screen that kills the T3's battery life, and the size of the battery you can squeeze into it is limited. Personally I don't have a problem with battery life on my T3. It lasts plenty long enough for me to survey three x-ray units (a good 6 hours of work), and my routine use isn't all that draining on the battery. But then again I'm not playing games on it all day, or using it to watch movies.

There are a number of hacks out there for extending battery life ranging from the Palm Power-To-Go external battery sled, external battery powered dongles for quick on the go recharges and tips for soldering in a new battery. I think this is one particularly cool (maybe not the prettiest) hack though. Take a bunch of Li-ion batteries from a laptop and stuff them into a cradle. Wall power charges the T3 battery or the add-on batteries, and the add-on batteries can be used to charge the T3. And it still syncs too!

Oh, here we go again...

The Bahamas got hammered by Frances, and Florida's getting it now too. And in another week or so, it may very well be deja vu as Ivan comes barrelling through. It was called a hurricane with today's 5AM advisory with the 5 day track taking it over Haiti/Dominican Republic and over the Bahamas. But it's still early yet and a long way away. Definitely another one to keep an eye on.

Apparently August has been a particularly busy season too, with 8 named storms so far. A record from what I've read.

In the meantime, if you've got some extra cash burning a hole in your pocket, consider making a donation to the Red Cross' Disaster Relief Fund. You can even donate your spare change at a Coinstar machine.

Almost ready for the housewarming

After spending pretty much the entire long weekend cleaning and unpacking various boxes, we finally have our apartment in mostly presentable condition. It's been a month since we moved in and finally most of the things that are in boxes are out of boxes, or have been put into different boxes, or have been tossed. We probably haven't tossed nearly enough stuff though. Soon we will be ready for the housewarming. All that's left is a few things in the bedroom and some boxes of class notes that need to be put away or thrown away.

Clunk...Oops

Ooo, now here's a phone that you don't want to drop.

I suppose it's technologically cool to stuff a 1.5GB 1" hard drive into a phone, but I would think that having a shock sensitive device in a drop-prone cell phone probably isn't the smartest idea. Maybe people take care of their phones better, but my wife is always dropping her phone on something, and I can't imagine something like this lasting very long around her. I'm sure plenty of people are dropping their cell phones all the time too. I would have thought some form of flash memory would be more suitable for a cell phone. And how long is the battery going to last on this thing?

It's bound to grab a lot of attention, but I can't imagine the idea lasting very long.

Found via Slashdot.

Splat!

Oooo, sadly NASA's Genesis capsule went splat into the desert after the parachutes failed to deploy. There was video of the splattage at NASA TV (along with video coverage of other unrelated things). There is a press conference scheduled for 2:30 EDT (also on NASA TV) where presumably we'll be told if there was anything salvagable from the sun-dust Genesis collected and what might have gone wrong with the parachutes.

Found via Slashdot

No rest for the weary

Ivan has beat up Grenada, and now has its sights set on Jamaica and Cuba. Don't take the boards off the windows yet. Florida may be next.

From today's 11AM discussion:

A RIDGE OVER THE BAHAMAS A LITTLE STRONGER THAN ANTICIPATED...WILL BRING THE HURRICANE TOWARD THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO AS INDICATED BY THE UK...CANADIAN AND NOGAPS GLOBAL MODELS. A WEAKER RIDGE THAN ANTICIPATED COULD RESULT ON A MORE NORTHWARD TRACK OVER THE BAHAMAS AND NEARBY THE EAST COAST OF FLORIDA AS INDICATED BY THE GFS. THE 4-5 DAY OFFICIAL FORECAST...WHICH IS HIGHLY UNCERTAIN...CALLS FOR A SOLUTION IN BETWEEN...BRINGING THE HURRICANE OVER WEST/CENTRAL CUBA INTO THE SOUTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO AND THEN FLORIDA.

Memories and music

Music can be a power trigger for memories, so when I stumbled on a copy of Moxy Fruvous' Live Noise album at the local Cat's Music, I just had to have it.

Had to have it because of 2 songs: The Drinking Song and King of Spain. Two undeniably classic Houseboating songs.

Ahh, fond memories.

Eleven! Eleven tropical storms, ah ah ah ah ah....

TD 11 sprouted up today just off the Lesser Antilles and is headed this way. Ivan will probably be mostly a wind and rain event for us, but this one will probably need to be watched by next week. This one is forecast to become TS Jeanne in a couple of days.

Congratulations, it's a girl!

As expected, there is now TS Jeanne making a beeline for Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. I think one good thing about this storm is that strengthening is forecast to occur slowly, so it may not be a really big hurricane like Ivan or Frances by the time it gets to striking distance of us. Looks like it's definitely headed this way though.

Everything looks pretty from the ISS

Today's APOD shows Ivan seen from the ISS. There are some other cool pictures taken by the current ISS crew too.

Maybe I should start boxing things up

When your chairman and director pop their heads into your office and ask if you're happy in here, it's usually not a good sign.

Around here, space is at a premium, and someone's always after the space you're in. Things are always getting shifted and shuffled around. Our department has a space committee looking at our space and other peoples' space and seeing what we can re-arrange or annex. Up until now, I didn't think my space was in anybody's plans, but now I'm a little worried.

If they give me some bigger space, I think I wouldn't mind. But I don't think I could fit into a much smaller space.

On MT's new Dynamic Publshing

Over at the 6A Pro network, Brad Choate has written an overview on MT's new dynamic publishing feature. This is just what I've been looking for, something to tell me just how the dynamic publishing is implemented and it's definitely more informative than what's in the MT documentation. I think it's something that will help a lot of people learn how it works and how to use it effectively. It's not really a tutorial on how to do the dynamic stuff, although there are some examples provided. It does provide a lot of good information showing what's behind the scenes though.

I don't really code like that, do I?

Hopefully the freshly launched PHP WTF site gets lots of contributions so that people like me can see what kinds of dumb programming and style mistakes not to make.

Is there an afterlife for storms?

Seems Ivan has resurrected itself and is going after the parts of the Gulf coast tht it missed the first time around.

A little more worrisome at the moment is Jeanne, which looks like it may be bringing in a lot of wind and rain this way, just as I'm supposed to head out to MD Anderson Cancer Center for a site visit (going there to check out some PET/CT equipment). But it's still a few days away yet, and things may change. I'm sure they're none too anxious to see yet another hurricane in Florida though, even a small one.

CD destruction

I came across this article on destroying CDs via one of the mailing lists I'm subscribed to. Has an interesting discussion on how to destroy unwanted/unneeded CDs when you don't need them anymore and don't want anybody to find and peek at their contents.

One of their words of caution:

NEVER try to destroy a disc by bending it between your fingers in an attempt to break it. Some will bend, but not break. Some will break in two. Some, however will shatter into flying shards of polycarbonate - ouch! This is dangerous, not only to yourself, but to any spouses, children, or pets which happen to be in the immediate vicinity.

Shredding works well, and so does microwaving (although your microwave might not like it). Melting it down works too, but we all know how nasty the smell of burning plastic is. Sanding works too.

There are a couple of quick ways to make a pressed CD, or a CD-R for that matter, useless. Take it out to the sidewalk and throw it data side down; put your foot on top of it and rub it around for a bit. That will do the trick for most purposes. Tossing it on a belt sander has the same effect, but watch your fingers.

Firefox voodoo

Over at the Mozillazine forums, there's this post about some of the ways you can tweak various Firefox configuration parameters to make Firefox load pages faster.

It's a long discussion with 21 pages worth of posts. A lot to read through, but definitely worthwhile reading.

KISS me baby!

A long long time ago (the timestamp I put on it says May 26 1996, back when WWW was new), I wrote this page, an attempt to describe the way I look at things. KISS is still something that I live by. It's something mathematicians and physicists are taught (or know instinctively), but not often applied to life. We all know that if a derivation, proof or equation looks like it's getting overly complicated, then it probably is and a mistake has probably been made somewhere. Of course some proofs and equations are naturally complex. But if it's gotten more complicated than you think it should be, it's time to step back and look for errors. It's something that's happened to me many many times. I remember working on assignments and solving equations that were getting far too involved, and then discovering I'd made a simple little mistake a few steps back.

One incident in particular that I often think about was an assignment for a partial differential equations class. Most of the assignments in that class routinely took several dozen pages to complete. One question I was working on turned into an ugly complicated 13 page writeup, at which point I tossed it and started over. Discovered a mistake I had made with a sign (something I was notorious for), and all of a sudden it became so much simpler. The 13 page solution I had written up earlier turned into a much more elegant 5 page writeup after I fixed my error.

I think the same thing goes for life. It shouldn't be complicated or convoluted or difficult. Simple, low maintenance and low stress. Makes for a much more enjoyable lifestyle.

Reprinted here for posterity and to fix some broken links.

K.I.S.S. Philosophy

This page has absolutely no relation to the rock band.

I've made K.I.S.S. one of the guiding principles of my life. It's self-explanatory, easy to follow and makes for a nice stress-free lifestyle. It works quite nicely for me, and it will probably work well for you too.

If you're not familiar with KISS, it stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. The Jargon file defines the KISS Principle as a design philosophy. However, I think it can and should apply to much more.

For me, KISS is all about removing as much of the complexity in life as is practical. Note the emphasis on practical. I don't believe it's possible or even desirable to remove all the complicated things in life. I think if you did that, life would be very boring. After all, some of the more interesting times in life come about when things get complicated.

So what's complicated and what's simple? That's something you have to decide for yourself.

What KISS is for me

KISS is...

• letting my instincts and intuition lead me around.
• low stress. KISS could even be a Zen thing. KISS is minimal effort, but not laziness. In this day an age, people are stressed out about alot of things they don't need to stress out over. They need more simplicity and less complexity.
• low brain-power. If you have to spend an inordinate amount of brain power working something out, then you're not following KISS. Some tasks do require alot of brain power, but if you think you're spending more than it should take, then it's time to step back and take another look.
• simple. KISS is straight lines. KISS is elegant simplicity.
• a low budget, low maintenance lifestyle

KISSish Readings

Winnie the Pooh

The House at Pooh Corner

The Tao of Pooh

Winnie the Pooh, IMO is one of the most KISSish...umm...people? that you can find. When was the last time you read Winnie the Pooh? Probably too long ago to really remember huh. As for The Tao of Pooh, personally, I think this is a KISSish book. Ya, ya, I know it's all about Taoism and how Winnie the Pooh can be seen as being very Taoist. I also think Winnie the Pooh is very KISSish too. Read these books. Maybe you'll receive some enlightenment like I did.

Examples of KISS

Other believers in KISS

Try doing a WWW search on

• kiss philosophy
• kiss principle
• keep it simple stupid

on one of these search engines

• Google
• Alta Vista
• Lycos
• WebCrawler

KISS...what else is there to say?

Plug in and let's go!

Well, this is interesting. Not quite sure what else to say about it. I suppose it could be fun.

No phishing off the bridge

The folks over at NGS have written a very good whitepaper titled The Phishing Guide: Understanding & Preventing Phishing Attacks. It talks about various types of phishing attacks and how to identify and protect yourself from them. Some of it is pretty technical, but it's a pretty good read and contains a lot of good information on how to recognize phishers. Definitely something to share with friends and family who might not be quite so savvy to these types of attacks.

Found via Bugtraq

Phishing is the new 21st century crime. The global media runs stories on an almost daily basis covering the latest organisation to have their customers targeted and how many victims succumbed to the attack. While the Phishers develop evermore sophisticated attack vectors, businesses flounder to protect their customers' personal data and look to external experts for improving email security. Customers too have become wary of "official" email, and organisations struggle to install confidence in their communications.

While various governments and industry groups battle their way in preventing Spam, organisations can in the meantime take a proactive approach in combating the phishing threat. By understanding the tools and techniques used by professional criminals, and analysing flaws in their own perimeter security or applications, organisations can prevent many of the most popular and successful phishing attack vectors.

This paper covers the technologies and security flaws Phishers exploit to conduct their attacks, and provides detailed vendor-neutral advice on what organisations can do to prevent future attacks. Security professionals and customers can use this comprehensive analysis to arm themselves against the next phishing scam to reach their in-tray.

If it ain't broke, upgrade it.

My Fedora box is dead. Well, it's not really dead. Lobotomized perhaps.

In an attempt to upgrade from FC2 to FC3 Test 2 using yum it broke. All the upgrade packages downloaded and installed fine, but it never booted up. As my wife said, "Surgery went fine, patient died".

No problem, easy fix. Just download the ISO's and install from CD. Should be back up and running in no time. So I download and burn the 4 CDs. Pop it into the drive and boot.

Twiddle twiddle twiddle. No CD recognized in the drive. Darned computer won't boot from the CD. It used to...but not this time. The CDs boot on the other computers I have, so it's not a problem with the CDs. Tried to boot of a Win2K CD too, but still no dice. Must be the CD drive. So now I'm stuck with waiting for our IT guys to get around to fixing it. No response from their online helpdesk form (if they're going to have an online form, they should at least monitor it), so I guess I'll have to call them when I get back to work on Monday.

Darned computers.

It's a Hooligan wedding!

Hooray! It's a wedding! It's official!

Two of my very good friends and fellow Hooligans are getting hitched in a couple of months. I am no doubt one of the last to receive the invitation, which was postmarked a week ago. For some reason everything takes a week to get to me by mail.

The wedding is only a couple of months away, and there isn't much time left to make arrangements. Now I'm wishing I hadn't procrastinated on getting a new passport. I wonder how long it will take to get a new one... And I need to apply for advanced parole from USCIS too. And there are flight arrangements to make also.

Oh dear, this could be a bit of a challenge. So much to get organized.

Cutting edge imaging

Just finished doing the acceptance testing of our new 64 slice CT scanner. This thing will generate a whole bucketload of images without even thinking about it. After two days of playing around, testing and scanning various phantoms, I ended up with a little over 3700 images to send to our PACS. Ended up with some very impressive looking reconstructed images showing a lot more detail in the reformatted coronal and sagittal planes than I expected. It's a cool machine, but radiologists are going to need new visualization tools to handle all the images these things can spit out.

On another note, the article about blogging I was interviewed for a couple of weeks ago was published today in The State newspaper. It's a short little fluffy piece with quotes and stuff from a few other webloggers (including me).