Imablog

Food truck feasting

2012-02-04T22:03:46Z

Hit up the Charleston Food Truck Festival in Marion Square this afternoon. A gathering of all the mobile food trucks in the Charleston area which also gathered a huge crowd of people. Somewhat daunting.

Each of the trucks had pretty long lines. This time I hit up the Magic Cheese Truck for a Buffalo Chicken Melt. Pretty tasty. It had little bits of blue cheese in it, which I normally don't like, but not so much that I didn't want to eat it. It was good with the tomato-basil soup/dipper that comes with their sammiches.

Can't go to one of these food truck gatherings without hitting the Diggity Donuts truck. They always seem to have the longest lines, but today they seemed to be able to get the donuts out faster so the line went a little quicker.

So now that I've been to a couple of food truck gatherings, I'm a little torn. The fact there are enough food trucks in the area to put on food truck rodeos and fests is really cool. They do seem to attract a lot of people though, and can be pretty crowded. If all you're going for is the food, then perhaps not the best way to do it since you'll end up standing in line for quite a while. Better to just track them down at their usual haunts if that's the case. The rodeos are a great opportunity to people watch (and dog watch) and gather with friends though, which can be a lot of fun.

I think what Charleston needs is a craft beer truck now, to hang out at the food truck rodeos. I wonder if that would be legal. Somehow I think probably not. With 4 local breweries, it would be pretty cool though.

Charleston Eats: Magic Cheese Truck

2012-02-04T21:24:22Z

Buffalo Chicken Melt

Running faster

2012-02-04T13:04:00Z

After a big November/December running lull (thanks to school) I've been trying to make sure I get out at least 2-3 times a week now. Signing up for the i5k (happening in a couple of months) has added a little more motivation.

On the good front, my "comfortable" running pace has gone down from 6:30 min/km to around 6 min/km and I can run a sub-30 minute 5k with a lot less effort than before. I think I should be able to shave 10-15 seconds off that comfort pace pretty easily by the time the i5k rolls around.

I think in a couple more weeks I'll be ready to increase the distance of my long runs.

A cool stylus

2012-02-02T23:24:20Z

Saw this cool circuit board stylus from Spun Pens on Etsy (via a Make Online blurb) and decided it was just too cool not to have.

It was a little bit smaller than I expected, but that was just because the shiny and want factor kept me from reading the full description so I really had no idea how big it would be. It appears to be made with an actual circuit board, not just printed on something. It would be interesting to find out how it gets rolled up like that.

A dome of some kind of soft material allows the stylus to work with capacitive touch screens. It works really well, better than some other styli that I've used. It requires a little bit of a firmer touch than you'd need using a finger, but not too much and doesn't take long to get used to.

It's pretty cool.

Flatbread-za

2012-01-31T23:24:50Z

While I was at the grocery store the other day, I came across these Flatout flatbreads that claimed to be low-carb (16 g carbs, 9g fiber, 7g net carbs), so I thought I'd try them out for pizza.

They're pretty thin, maybe a little bit thicker than a tortilla (but not much) and oblong shaped like a 400m track.

They make for a pretty decent crust and bakes up pretty crispy. I suppose they're pretty decent flavour wise. Still deciding. The one I picked up was supposed to be Italian Herb, but I'm not sure I taste much of that in it. Maybe if I try it out as a wrap it will taste more Italian Herb-y.

Stars and clouds

2012-01-30T03:16:58Z

Some high thin clouds add an interesting background to tonight's efforts.

A stack of 182 30s images, f/5.6 ISO 800. Click through to see the full size 3456x2304 image. Look closely and you'll see dots from high flying airplanes. See if you can spot the streak of what I think might have been a passing satellite.

Tortill-za

2012-01-29T03:49:58Z

Pizza has always been one of my favourite food groups. Sadly it isn't really all that compatible with my low-carb lifestyle now, unless I want to deal with big blood glucose spikes.

Then the thought occurred to me that instead of regular pizza crust (which is where the problem lies), I need a low-carb crust. I've seen various recipes on a diabetes forum I've been hanging out in for low carb pizza crusts using ingredients like almond or coconut flour, or a low carb biscuit flour.

How about tortillas? I found some low carb tortillas a while back that tasted pretty decent. They seemed like they would do pretty well for a pizza crust.

Take one or two tortillas (the ones I used were 6" diameter) and spread a little pizza sauce on them (~1 Tbsp). I leave a bit of unsauced edge to make it a little easier to pick up for eating. Top with whatever you like. I suggest going a little easy on the cheese because without the bready crust to soak up the cheese oil, it just gets all over the place and becomes all messy (unless you like that sort of thing).

Slide onto a pan that you've had heating up in the oven (I like to heat them up in a 500°F oven). This will help make the tortilla "crust" nice and crispy. Bake until the cheese is all melty and brown (~5 minutes). Remove, let cool a bit and cut into slices. Eat.

Stars and planes

2012-01-29T02:34:33Z

A stack of 54 30s exposures, f/3.5 ISO 400. A few planes flew by to add some interesting elements.

Charleston's night sky

2012-01-29T02:20:56Z

20s exposure of Charleston's night sky.

Busy weekend in store

2012-01-28T00:27:57Z

I think this is going to be one of those weekends where I've over-committed myself just a little bit. That's what I get for doing things without consulting the all-mighty calendar first.

First there's volunteering at the aquarium. The Camp Carolina exhibit has gone away to make room for a new Madagascar exhibit, so it will be interesting to see what kind of progress has been made in the last two weeks.

Then a quick run to pick up this week's Ambrose Farm CSA and then off to the fairgrounds for the Charleston Kennel Club dog show. Always a fun time there.

From there it's out to Folly Beach for a second attempt at doing some star trails. Hopefully I haven't run into my second battery by then, otherwise I won't be doing star trails for very long.

Then if I haven't completely worn myself out, dig into the stack of papers I'm supposed to be reading to prepare for writing the proposal for my PhD qualifer.

Sunday is all dog show and more reading.

Whee.

Fat video

2012-01-25T10:36:26Z

The HD video (superfine 1920x1080) from my Galaxy S II gobbles up storage at a rate of about 2 MB per second of video.

I haven't checked how fast the other resolutions use up space, but it will be less than this.

I'm going to need a bigger SD card to put into this thing.

SQL subqueries and joins

2012-01-24T21:18:48Z

A while back, a script I had written to dig stats out of our PACS database stopped working for some reason. Since I was mostly done with that project, I didn't mess around with it too much.

Now I've been asked to resurrect it to gather more usage data in advance of a planned migration.

The PACS database uses Oracle, but all my DB experience is with MySQL. This is the main query I'm dealing with (it runs from a shell script, which is why the variables are there)

select
  count(study_uid),
  avg(num_images),
  sum(num_images),
  max(num_images),
  min(num_images) 
from dosr_study 
where study_ref in (
  select
    study_ref
  from dosr_series
  where modality='${modality}'
)
and study_date between
  '${c_year}${c_month}01' and '${c_year}${c_month}31'

For some reason this query stopped running. Well, it runs, but it just doesn't spit out any numbers like it used to.

If I reformulate the query into what I think is the equivalent query without the subquery,

select distinct
  count(study_uid),
  avg(num_images),
  sum(num_images),
  max(num_images),
  min(num_images) 
from dosr_study, dosr_series 
where dosr_study.study_ref = dosr_series.study_ref 
and dosr_series.modality='${modality}' 
and study_date between
  '${c_year}${c_month}01' and '${c_year}${c_month}31'

the query works, but returns different results from what I got before when the original query worked.

I suppose I'll need to find out more about Oracle SQL so I can figure out why the original query stopped working in the first place.

Update: One of my friends thinks I probably haven't rewritten the query correctly (what I was thinking as well) and suggested changing

from dosr_study, dosr_series 
where dosr_study.study_ref = dosr_series.study_ref

from dosr_study
join dosr_series on dosr_study.study_ref=dosr_series.study_ref

Galaxy S II X-ray Take 2

2012-01-24T16:55:31Z

I was doing some testing on a radiographic room today and took the opportunity to get a better x-ray image of my Galaxy S II. This was acquired using 80 kV, 5 mAs with a little bit of magnification.

Compared to the previous x-ray I took, the NFC antenna integrated into the battery looks like it's probably the series of concentric traces, like those RFID security tags you find in books and stuff. The components on the circuit boards are also much more visible in this one.

Golden Ticket camera

2012-01-23T22:38:09Z

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or Facebook or the blog knows I like to take pictures of my food and post them.

Andra introduced me to the Foodspotting app early last year and since then most of my food photos have been going there and cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook.

In December, Foodspotting ran a Golden Ticket promo contest where they hid Golden Tickets (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) within the app. You 'found' them by browsing through food pictures that other people posted.

Just after I saw the email about the Golden Ticket promotion, I found one, much to my surprise. That it was a Golden Ticket for a wee little Sony WX9 camera was an even bigger surprise.

Haven't tried it out yet. It's still charging up. Fortunately Sony saw fit to design the camera so that it uses SD cards (which I already have) as well as their own Memory Sticks (which I don't have). Unfortunately they decided to use a micro-USB like connector, so that means another USB cable dangling off my computer.

Looking forward to playing with this new little camera. Thanks Foodspotting!

An afternoon at Lighthouse Inlet

2012-01-23T04:16:55Z

An overcast day spoiled my plans to do some star trail photography at Lighthouse Inlet, at the north end of Folly Beach. I did get some nice beach photos though, before the cold wind made my hands too stiff to handle the camera. I did end up losing a lens cap to the surf though. At least it wasn't a camera.

There is of course the view of the Morris Island lighthouse. See what I did with the lighthouse on Sullivan's Island in the background?

and plenty of old tree skeletons buried in the sand

This might be one of my favourites from the day. The bright green provides some great contrast against the tangled gray/brown of the branches.

Check out the rest of the images over in the gallery.

Galaxy S II X-ray

2012-01-16T19:21:54Z

A new Orthoscan mini C-arm arrived at the hospital last week, so while I was doing the acceptance testing on it today I used it to get a shot of my Galaxy S II.

The big grey blob in the middle is the battery and the vertical stripe in the battery I'm guessing is the NFC antenna. The square just below the top would be the camera. The square to the left of that just below the top is the front facing camera. On the right side is the headphone jack. The rectangular thing at the bottom to the right of the USB/HDMI connector is the speaker I think.

Charleston Eats: Diggity Donuts

2012-01-15T01:44:14Z

Cinnamon sugar, lavendar sugar, just coffee donuts

Dark chocolate/cherry, Bailey's and coffee, kiwi cheesecake donuts

Charleston Eats: Tokyo Crepes

2012-01-15T01:41:51Z

Spicy corn cheese crepe

Rib roast

2012-01-10T00:06:45Z

Super nom

The Answer to the Great Question

2012-01-09T12:22:25Z

"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question ..."
"Yes...!"
"Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought.
"Yes...!"
"Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
"Yes...!"
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!...?"
"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams