The PJS Braindump Landfill

Internet Millionaires!

2012-01-22T20:52:00.000-05:00

Hahaha, eine Trouvaille aus dem Web 1.0!

Sunrise Avenue - Hollywood Hills

2011-12-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

Baltimore, Annapolis around Xmas

2011-12-25T22:51:00.003-05:00

Google has completely messed up Picasa. Not only is it next to impossible to get a link for an album to share (e.g. here), but also Picasa itself is unusably slow.

Still, new pictures from America (click for full album):

Updates from America, Baltimore, and Work

2011-12-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

Correct codes are all alike

2011-12-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

Correct codes are all alike; every wrong code is wrong in its own way.

How to get a LyX thesis in shape

2011-10-24T22:08:00.002-04:00

grep -h "filename " *.lyx | grep -v "lyx" | sort | uniq | awk '{print "cp", "'\''" $2 "'\''", "images"; }' | tr -d "\t" | sed "s/cp \' /cp \'/" | sed "s/cp '/cp \"/" | sed "s/' images/\" images/" > allIllustrations.02.txt

chmod a+x allIllustrations.02.txt

for fname in `ls *.lyx` ; do cat $fname | awk '{print $0}' | sed 's|filename .*\/\([^\.]*\)\(\..*\)$|filename images/\1\2|g' > temp/$fname ; done

mv temp/* .

(Just the broad outline, the details are omitted. Still, far away from BK's famous one-fingered one-liners.)

Slow Sort of Country

2011-10-12T21:15:00.000-04:00

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Years

2011-09-21T18:15:00.003-04:00

It's done.

Eleven years after the first surgical robotics seminar, it's completed.

But only in the previous lab.
In the new lab, the fourth year has just begun.

Windows RG (Really Good) Edition

2011-08-30T12:35:00.001-04:00

Hahahaha... probably too few people will find this hilarious, but I am one.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/winrg

Grey Poupon on your wiener

2011-08-25T19:16:00.001-04:00

Coincidence

2011-08-24T16:21:00.004-04:00

At first, nothing is happening for years.

Then one day you wake up, and you notice that getting company funding, interviewing prospective employees, applying for three concurrent visas, going to Germany for defense, and presenting at a conference in Canada all have to happen within two weeks.

Probably the phone will also ring while being at the restroom.

2011-08-23T15:15:00.003-04:00

Bigger than The Great Baltimore Earthquake of July 16, 2010, today our CS seminar was interrupted by shaking walls and chairs and then everybody running and shouting to get out of here and then meeting outside on the lawn and seeing everybody else on Homewood Campus was out and surprised and kind of confused. It's not like Baltimore gets earthquakes... ever. Except today. 5.8!

What to write about

2011-08-12T11:58:00.004-04:00

So, a bit of self-critical reflection has yielded the following:

- I don't want to write about our car.
- I don't want to write about our apartment.
- I don't want to write about the company.
- I don't want to write about grant writing.
- I don't want to write about power sockets.
- I don't want to write about potholes.
- I don't want to write about complaints in general.

What else is left to write about?

Op-Ed

2011-07-30T20:40:00.002-04:00

I'm a guest, and I shouldn't say so, but I am also a part of it, as everybody else is: I'm embarrassed.

Eurofood

2011-07-13T15:55:00.004-04:00

In the three years I've been here, I was successful in finding some German and Polish food reminding me of home:

Baltimore Impressions, early 2011

2011-06-26T22:58:00.002-04:00

Random Baltimores in 2011

Random Baltimore impressions, ranging from Persian New Year BBQ to recent sour cherry picking trip.

Notes

2011-06-22T11:37:00.002-04:00

Ok, I should write down this thing once, because I find I keep repeating it on and off. And still it has lost none of its luster.

"Zuvor war ein Palästinenser getötet worden, als er mit einem Karren voller Raketen in der Nähe des Grenzzauns zu Israel unterwegs war. Eine israelische Rakete habe den Karren getroffen. Dabei sei der Mann ums Leben gekommen und mehrere andere seien verletzt worden."

(taken from http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/04/gaza-stromausfall)

Gorgeous

2011-06-05T16:17:00.005-04:00

This is more like the actual car...

... and this is almost exactly like it.

Finally, this explains who owns a Jaaag.

Hawaii Honeymoon 2011

2011-05-07T15:09:00.001-04:00

Hawaii Honeymoon 2011

Easter 2011

2011-04-24T15:13:00.000-04:00

Easter 2011

What kind of country

2011-03-19T21:56:00.002-04:00

What kind of country has power plugs that fall out of the wall. I mean, seriously. What kind of country???

WikiLeaks

2011-02-21T21:28:00.002-05:00

http://www.wikileaks.ch/

Video: Collateral Murder
2010-04-05

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

This video, which launched WikiLeaks into public view in 2010, is seriously disgusting. WikiLeaks, keep it up.

Florida, SPIE 2011

2011-02-12T01:50:00.002-05:00

Another conference, another place.
This time it's Orlando, FL.

Florida for SPIE 2011

Yes. Long hiatus, lots of things have happened. More updates to come.

80%

2010-11-15T19:52:00.002-05:00

Today in the Gilman Hall atrium:

P: "Wow... look around... at least 80% of the computers are MacBooks..." (every table had two or three machines open)

E: "At least 80% of them are girls!"

Ph: "P, count one and one together, and you're in business."

(These numbers don't even begin to capture the overwhelming majority Macs have in campuses like Hopkins.)

Everything else is secondary

2010-10-16T00:27:00.002-04:00

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford, 2005

Unpredictability

2010-10-04T00:57:00.002-04:00

The big enemy of civilized society is not Evil, it's Unpredictability.

Sigh. These days, I don't understand my life any more. I must seem unpredictable, and others are unpredictable to me. It's a roller coaster of certainties, attempts, reversals, and about-faces.
Even the weather is jumpy and irrational.

Panda

2010-09-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

Their Moon Shot and Ours

2010-09-27T14:48:00.001-04:00

Their Moon Shot and Ours
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times
Published: September 25, 2010

China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.

Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan. [...]

China 2010 / MICCAI

2010-09-18T22:22:00.003-04:00

In September 2010, I went to Beijing to attend the MICCAI conference... a workshop, a tutorial, and a paper presentation to be done.
Before that, I spent a few days with Yuki traveling to Tianjin.

China 2010 (click for Picasa album)

The third guy

2010-09-10T19:50:00.003-04:00

There is a person living in my house.

I don't know this person. His name could be Preston, or Spencer, or anything like this, for all I know. He and I live at diametrally opposite ends of the house - me on the third floor, he in the basement. I don't know where he came from or when he appeared, but he is there.
Furthermore, everybody else has left the house. Until yesterday, a girl lived in the room next door, but now she is away. So it is only him and me in the house.

One day I should go downstairs and start looking for him. Maybe he is a nice person, or maybe we won't get along well at all. All is possible, with strange people in your house. He leaves before I do, and mostly he returns after I do, or maybe before. I feed the cats, he lives. Maybe it is him who is emptying the cats' food bowls, who knows.

It is strange to share space with an unknown stranger.

My First Video

2010-09-01T02:58:00.004-04:00

Finally!

Finally creating this demo video for work is done! After all the effort I put into it, I couldn't look at it any more in the end... collecting and shuffling all the source files made me want to hold my breath until I faint...

The final voice over was comparatively fun, even.

However, the whole thing is so confidential that I cannot show or say anything more about it than just the one following screen shot (I had to crop it a bit, too)...

Talk about Skiing

2010-08-31T09:52:00.004-04:00

"Did you finally ever go skiing since you've been here? I know you kept talking about it, but did you ever actually do it?"

Somehow skiing here just doesn't happen. There should be something in the Appalachians, but even more so on the other side, in the Rockies. There should also be time.

This year I'll go. No matter what.

Curse of the Traveller

2010-08-31T09:34:00.002-04:00

On the restless road to nowhere
There’s no certain peace it seems
Desire to keep on moving
Till the river of dreams
Is it just because someone told you
Is it just because you found
Old freedom feels uneasy when duty is around

When allegiance asks the questions
Old freedom twists and turns
And chokes on codes of honour
On the sword of no return

And it’s the curse of the traveller
The curse of the traveller
Got a hold of me
And it won’t let you be

And in sleepless nights
You’ll call her name
And feel loneliness cold to the bone
And when the daylight breaks
This old tired heart aches
To be such a long way, such a long way from home

And you long for the harbourlights
But you’ll never be free
Of the craving for refuge
And the call of the sea
Always wanting to sell up
But always needing to buy
So till the road leads to somewhere
And that river runs dry

It’s the curse of the traveller
Ain’t gonna let you be
The curse of the traveller
And it sure got a hold of me

Chris Rea, "Curse of the Traveller"

German Engineer Fixes "Unfixable" Bike; American Mechanics Stumped

2010-08-29T18:58:00.005-04:00

After over a month with a flat tire and a seemingly interminable back-and-forth between different bike shops, mechanics, and his own backyard shed, a German engineer in Baltimore, MD decided to take matters into his own hands.

"You know, it didn't take me much longer to fix it properly than it took the professionals down at Joe's Bikes to fix it improperly", Philipp J. Stolka of Mt. Washington, Baltimore, MD said today. The rear tire flatticity of his K2 Easy Roller cruiser bike had mysteriously appeared on its own while the bike - also known by its nickname, "Hopkin Green Frog" - was stowed in the trunk of Stolka's Volvo V70 XC station wagon - affectionately nicknamed "Sandwich", loosely alluding to his pre-previous car, a Volvo 850 station wagon named "Smørebrød" - in Baltimore's crushing mid-July heat.

"I tried a couple of different approaches. After my landlord told me it's got a puncture, I decided I am too busy with research" - Stolka is an ultrasound researcher in Johns Hopkins' computing science department - "and so thought, fuck it, let the pros deal with it, I can probably stomach a small expense for their labor."

However, the simple task of replacing a flat tire turned into an ordeal.

The first bike store/mechanic the still-hopeful owner tried (REI of Timonium, MD) accepted the work, but couldn't provide an estimate nor finish the work in less than four days, not including the weekend. After initially agreeing to these terms, Stolka got second thoughts about this open-ended and free-billing approach and requested his bike back by phone the next day, saying he'd pick it up "within the hour". Hearing this, the REI representative immediately concocted a story about another customer who canceled his bike job there, so they could pull the Easy Roller ahead in the queue and work on it immediately. Delighted, Stolka accepted, and finally arrived at REI four hours later. In retrospect, "it's needless to say that they hadn't touched my bike by then", the disillusioned owner said. Also, they couldn't sell a proper tire.

He picked up the bike and tried another workshop, "Joe's Bikes" of Mt. Washington. Stacked with hyper-expensive bikes, they are providing "full-program bike workshop services", so the owner thought. After initially estimating "ten minutes work", it eventually took the two youngsters behind the counter twenty minutes to take the slightly-more-complex-than-usual rear wheel mechanism apart.

The K2 Easy Roller sports a three-gear planetary gearbox, coupled to a fully-automatic gear control. Drawing energy and velocity information from a generator in the front wheel assembly, a center-mounted electronic control box operates the rear-wheel-mounted gearbox, providing a buttery-smooth riding experience at any speed.

"When I saw this, in America of all places, my first thought was, whoa, alien space tech!!1!", Stolka reports.

Joe's mechanics put the bike back together, charged a laughably small amount, and let the happy owner take the bike home. Upon arriving there, however, to his dismay he discovered the tire was again as flat as it had been before, totally nullifying any benefit gained from the whole procedure. When he immediately returned the bike to Joe's, they agreed to work on it - properly and "of course we won't charge you for this extra work" this time - within the next hour.

When Stolka returned to the store before closing hour, he was told that they "cannot do anything on it, we are sorry Sir, please let us reimburse your expenses".

The third store the now utterly disgusted and upset owner visited didn't have the exact tire size, but assured him that a closely-related U.S. size tire would do the job just fine. At this point, Stolka bought the tire, but thought better than leaving his bike there for yet another shot at it.

The following weekend, he finally found time to lay his hands onto the bike himself, and within less than half an hour he had collected the necessary tools from the unfamiliar workshop of his landlord, disassembled the gearbox assembly, replaced the tire, pumped it up, refitted the wheel, and took the bike for a spin around the block. It is possible that the engineer felt right at home between metric screws and 700mm wheels of his K2, not having to deal with stuff like 29" tires or 3/8 and 17/32" wrenches.

"You know, if you don't do the job yourself, nobody ain't gonna do it", the now-elated owner says. For the Polish-born, German-educated computing scientist and robotics engineer, the most difficult part of the procedure was to "find the valve cap in the garden between the grass and the oak seeds that kept showering down onto my back", he said. He is extremely disconcerted at the dismal state of engineering and general skills in the American workforce, with "the country circling the drain, big time".

"Even the smallest things are not being done here any more, stuff just gets bought anew. The other day, I caught myself cursing the non-functional hot iron and thought of going to Best Buy to get a new one. Then, I realized that this kind of low tech can be fixed with a good look and maybe a screwdriver, especially since everything runs on 110V here. And it worked", Stolka said.

The next thing the researcher aims to fix is "low-cost stereo computer vision, and after that maybe heal cancer", he mused.

Over The Fact

2010-08-29T12:24:00.003-04:00

One of the great insights of the Baltimore Sun, on its front page:

I don't think you'll ever get over the fact that something you loved doing, you're no longer involved in. [...]

The famous Dave Trembley, recently fired Orioles manager.
It's not a really great insight, though.

Quiet late breakfast on the deck. Warm, summer is winding down, green leaves, an ever-so-slight breeze... Quiet. And lonely. Everybody left.

Baltimore Center At Night

2010-08-29T01:40:00.004-04:00

Picasa album "Baltimore Center"

The Baltimore Center was basically re-built from scratch in the 2nd half of the 20th century, mainly in the International Style. Although mostly devoid of people, at least it is marginally safe. Looking at only those pictures, one might be forgiven for thinking it's a civilized city.

Several buildings were designed by renowned architects, such as the two Mies van der Rohe creations in the above album; while the actual push came in the 1950s from Baltimore's then-mayor Tommy D'Alesandro, father of today's Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

On Design

2010-08-28T03:33:00.006-04:00

I just watched "Objectified", a documentary about design. ("Discover how manufactured objects that surround us such as cars, phones and chairs influence our daily lives with this revealing documentary, which features top industrial designers discussing their creative processes and professional objectives. Director Gary Hustwit (Helvetica) explores not only how objects get made, but also why they make us feel the way they do and how they can make our world better.")

From the movie, by designer Marc Newson:

All of my dreams were about the future.
What I want to do is be able to do is to have things that don't exist, things that you can't go out and buy.
Things that irritate you... anger, or dissatisfaction at the very least, play such an important role in motivating you to do what we do.
Ultimately my job as a designer is to look into the future, to look at what is going to happen, not what has happened.

I am driving our lab's students crazy with it, but one major direction I am trying my own developments to push into includes the avoidance of buttons. Of course, this drive is not mine - there is no better exponent of this than Apple. This is not perfectionism for its own sake, not l'art pour l'art. The iDevices have nothing to do any more with music players, phones, TVs, game consoles, Filofaxes, being just slabs of dark glass; but they organically become everything the user wants them to be at that moment in time. This can only be achieved from a blank slate, from the prototypical Platonic ideal of an invisible unobtrusive interface.

Whenever this happens, however rarely this flow is attained, a little glimpse of a better environment can be seen and made. The fulfillment of this arc, from irritation and anger to inspiration and bliss, is what design is all about.

Music of the Day - Philip Glass' "Satyagraha"

2010-08-27T22:40:00.003-04:00

Paul Barnes performs Philip Glass' Satyagraha in Los Angeles.

It actually goes well with "Morning" below.

Morning

2010-08-27T03:15:00.004-04:00

Morning came with lightheaded bliss
Hiding her promise in a tight embrace

All her beauty on show
Sparkling and radiant;
Her cool glittering dew
Behind a mimicry of gold

Painting weightless visions in the sunny sky
Rays breaking in millions of sparks
Each of them carelessly dancing
Forever suspended among wispy clouds in the blue

Turning her daffodil colors from the light
A thousand liliac petals silently shivering
She opened her arms wide
And smiling began her retreat

Offering bright lively vistas
A thousand and one echos entwined
Hinting at untold mysteries
She was dropping her cues

In her dazzling display
Green dawn long left behind
From her caring warm hand
Stumbled charades and despair

With everything said
Her blade hidden by countless reflections
Invisible gates started to beckon
Behind white blinding sunshine

(Knowing, not hearing)
Infinity twisting just behind
(A Grandpa's house)
the withered surprises, suddenly stale

With a frozen smile
The orchid sun set
In her feathery guile
And numbness dropped in

Morning's rolling sounds,
Her charming performance
And adorable touches
Would soon be forgotten

With comfort in waiting
Its engine willingly turning
On that lightheaded morning -
Everything seemed as always.

Escaping last year's heat wave

2010-08-15T15:28:00.001-04:00

This year's heat wave seems to be winding down, finally. Time to look back at last year's coping strategies.

Escaping last year's heat wave

As usual, more pics after the link.

Snapshots of Life in Baltimore

2010-08-14T01:45:00.002-04:00

Snapshots of Life in Baltimore

As usual, more pics after the click above.

Blumenkuebel im Antoniusstift

2010-08-07T12:52:00.001-04:00

Blumenkuebel ueberall, die Medien sind schon ueberfuellt.

Baltimore, Druid Hill Park

2010-08-01T00:45:00.000-04:00

Baltimore, Druid Hill Park neighborhood.

More pics after the link.

Stephen Pitcairn, and "Baltimore crime rate down"

2010-07-28T12:06:00.004-04:00

Just for background: In German media, news about Japan's new government's first execution (of a criminal who killed two people years ago).

For comparison, in Baltimore, crime rate for this year is down - five people murdered last weekend (compared to the nine or twelve murders on Memorial Day Weekend, it's an improvement).

One of the killed was a 23-years-old researcher from Hopkins Medical. He was walking back home from the train station while talking on the phone with his mother, when a black couple approached and stabbed him to death. Both of his murderers should have been in jail, but multiple convictions and 8-15-year sentences didn't get them off the streets of Baltimore. They were out "hunting" that night.

"As an undergraduate, Stephen spent a year in Japan working in a research lab and he was fluent in Japanese. He was very dedicated to his work as a member of the team in my lab studying breast cancer. Stephen was in the process of applying to medical school for next year and he had all of the personal qualities needed for a successful career as a physician."

Bugatti

2010-07-22T22:34:00.002-04:00

OK, these are the last ones for today. Promised. But watch them. It's European tech!

Winter!

2010-07-22T21:33:00.002-04:00

Just as a reminder. It won't stay 100degF forever. Not yet.

Winter!

Baltimore: Ain't No Sunshine (3 Sons Remix)

2010-07-22T21:31:00.002-04:00

Baltimore.
This is what it looks like when it's good.

Ain't No Sunshine (3 Sons Remix) from Yianni Mathioudakis on Vimeo.

Alone in Tokyo

2010-07-22T20:35:00.001-04:00

Another Philip Bloom masterpiece.

Alone in Tokyo HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Microsoft Autodafé

2010-07-21T18:44:00.000-04:00

IR Fail

2010-07-21T11:36:00.003-04:00

I bought an IR (pass) filter for my camera on eBay the other day, as I figured that IR photography is the last technical frontier to explore with my Sony R1 before I have to upgrade to something else and retire the (perfectly working) R1.

So I got this filter, knowing that today's cameras have fairly good internal IR block filters, but still wanted to give it a try. (I didn't expect the R1's is going to be that perfect.)

What I got is this. I had to expose for three minutes in broad sunny daylight, got a basically monochromatic blur with essentially zero brightness, but at least it's dramatic.

It's a $20 picture.

DMIP Retreat 2010, Fun at Home, in Baltimore, and beyond

2010-07-12T00:00:00.004-04:00

DMIP Retreat 2010, Fun at Home, in Baltimore, and beyond

As usual, Picasa pics after the link.

Play To Win

2010-07-09T21:27:00.003-04:00

"[...] felt no need to be first and coolest, but would emulate the turtle, not the hare. Slow but sure wins the race. He also said that the company chooses its battles carefully, but when they target a particular market they play to win."

Choose your battle carefully, then play to win.

This is the best strategic vision I've heard in a long time.

North of Baltimore, and Quiet

2010-07-02T15:46:00.001-04:00

North of Baltimore, and Quiet

Again, more pictures after the click.

Real-time

2010-06-22T17:44:00.004-04:00

I am extremely upset ("p***ed").

When revising a student's paper, the phrase "real time XXX" constantly irks me. I am sure it is wrong. I am sure it has to be "real-time XXX", and "XXX is performed in real-time" or "XXX is performed in realtime", not "XXX is performed in real time".

But I cannot find proof anywhere.

Any help?

(I submitted that as a question to the Chicago Manual of Style... there must be some help out there!!)

Hm. Well. Maybe "XXX is performed in real time" could be acceptable. But not "real time XXX"!

First Sentence in Baltimore

2010-06-17T18:44:00.001-04:00

I just remembered that the first full sentence anybody in Baltimore said to me, when I had just arrived on a sweltering hot day in September 2008, when I was looking for a place to live, was:

"Did you just come out of jail?"

Jesus Struck by Lightning

2010-06-15T23:03:00.002-04:00

Do yourself a favor and read this: Jesus Struck by Lightning.

The hilariousest piece of news in quite a while. I mean, just read it, and don't miss out on the comments!

The GPL'd Girlfriend

2010-06-14T21:36:00.004-04:00

Why would anybody not want to use a Linux version of Google's Picasa photo management tool? ... Looks like the Internet has the answer:

He doesn't want a GPL Linux version because if he uses it, his photos become derivative works and therefore he loses all ownership of his photos, his camera, his computer, and everything that he photographed becomes GPL'd which means, if the guy photographed his girlfriend, all of the FOSS community has to sleep with her.

Amazingly, it's on the Internet, so it must be true.

edit:
And one bonus snippet, because it's late and I am still writing:

The path to IT modernization [in North Korea] began in the 1990s but was cemented in the early 2000s when Kim Jong Il, the de-facto leader of the country, declared people who couldn't use computers to be one of the three fools of the 21st century. (The others, he said, are smokers and those ignorant of music.)

Streets of Baltimore

2010-06-08T23:25:00.003-04:00

What a sucker. These days he'd not be walking the street of Baltimore at night. He'd be shot for good, and that'd be it.

Ten people down last Memorial Day weekend on the streets of Baltimore! (Or maybe nine. Or twelve, if you count the 83-year-old guy who strangled his 80-year-old wife. And I wonder if the guy who got shot while driving on the highway counts as well... he made it to a hospital 43 miles away.)

I sold the farm to take my woman where she longed to be
We left our kin and all our friends back there in Tennessee
I bought those oneway tickets she had often begged me for
And they took us to the streets of Baltimore

Her heart was filled with laughter when she saw those city lights
She said the prettiest place on earth is Baltimore at night
Oh well a man feels proud to give his woman what she's longing for
And I kind of liked the streets of Baltimore

Well I got myself a factory job I ran an old machine
I bought a little cottage in a neighborhood serene
Yet every night when I came home with every muscle sore
She would drag me through the streets of Baltimore

Well I did my best to bring her back to what she used to be
But I soon learned she loved those bright lights much more than she loved me
Now I'm a going back on that same train that brought me here before
While my baby walks the streets of Baltimore
Yes my baby walks the streets of Baltimore

Macro Cat

2010-06-06T18:58:00.002-04:00

Macro Cat

As usual, album behind the click.

"the shadow of lost knowledge"

2010-06-05T15:28:00.002-04:00

William Johnson (later Cory), King's Scholar 1832-41, Master 1845-72, in his Eton Reform II as adapted by George Lyttleton in writing to Rupert Hart-Davis:

"At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness."

iZap

2010-05-29T15:33:00.002-04:00

Although the screenshot from a (I believe NASA) video on the right is showing the impact and the accuracy of a deadly laser weapon from a high-flying autonomous drone on a stationary target vehicle, the coincidence of appearing (on Engadget, I think) with the devices on the left is striking, IMHO.

WiFi, 10.5 to 10.6, and Momentus XT

2010-05-27T12:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I spent two hours with the Hopkins IT support, after I finally got fed up with the flaky WiFi connection via the secure "hopkins" wireless network both on campus and in the hospital.

Two technicians looked at Oolong, ten reboots, a call to some IT supervisor to change entries in some central database... and finally it looked as if Oolong had consistent access to wireless Internet. After more than 1.5 years here!

Needless to say, I felt elated.

I returned to the lab, opened Oolong - and no connectivity.

This morning I tried in Levering Hall, my customary café place on campus... nothing again. Ten minutes later in the room next to the main café - connectivity ok. There seems to be no rule to where or when it works.

So I decided to finally reinstall Mac OS X. It feels like giving in, and in a sense it is. The technicians suspected it might have something to do with upgrading from 10.5 to 10.6, which is the last remaining explanation for this odd and annoying behavior.

And since I have to reinstall anyway, I decided to get a new hard disk as well, since mine started annoying me several months ago by becoming excruciatingly slow. It might have to do with being 95% full, but also with being a 5400rpm drive. So I ordered a Seagate Momentus XT - 7200rpm, but more importantly with not just 32MB cache, but most importantly a 4GB SSD component onboard. This hybrid disk will soo make Oolong fly.

And, I will have reliable WiFi.

Stranded (a review)

2010-05-22T15:12:00.002-04:00

As I have touched neither my camera nor my photo management tool for the last month (being completely absorbed be work and the new iToy), I finally got around to select a few pics from my stranded time in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Netherlands and Belgium 2010

The Creation of Time

2010-05-19T23:05:00.001-04:00

“Forget wars, religions, famines and poems for the moment,” Dr. Ridley writes. “This is history’s greatest theme: the metastasis of exchange, specialization and the invention it has called forth, the ‘creation’ of time.”

You can appreciate the timesaving benefits through a measure devised by the economist William D. Nordhaus: how long it takes the average worker to pay for an hour of reading light. In ancient Babylon, it took more than 50 hours to pay for that light from a sesame-oil lamp. In 1800, it took more than six hours of work to pay for it from a tallow candle. Today, thanks to the countless specialists producing electricity and compact fluorescent bulbs, it takes less than a second.

(from the New York Times, Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons)

FLTK and CMAKE and OS X 10.6

2010-05-18T16:58:00.003-04:00

Who would have guessed that configuring FLTK v1.3.x-r7606 using CMAKE 2.8.1 doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.6.3, unlike what the installation documentation for IGSTK v4.2 is saying and unlike what works nice for ITK 3.18.0 and VTK 5.6.0? (It seems to be related to building for x86_64 instead of i386, and to the lack of Cairo libraries - which shouldn't be used anyway in this setup since Cocoa (or maybe Quartz, who knows) will do a better job with aliasing anyway.)
Instead, one has to use the tried-and-true "./configure;make;make install" approach, in fact, "sudo make install".

...

In all probability nobody cares about this at all. I am only jotting this down for my own future self.

...

"blah blah does not contain a CMakeLists.txt file. CMake does not support this case but it used to work accidentally and is being allowed for compatibility." !

"Why the iPad will flourish"

2010-05-16T15:46:00.001-04:00

"[...] In all of this, iPad is creating its own market between the smart phone and the laptop. We could call this a “white space” or a “blue ocean” but I prefer to think of it as a “third space.” In the manner of Zeno’s paradox (and, yes, Starbucks), Apple managed to split the difference between existing categories, and honor the way the consumer sees entertainment, contemplation and recreation. The iPad critics can’t see this third space because they work from a utilitarian point of view. For them, iPad will create economic value only if it solves practical problems. But Apple has always seen the economic proposition as a cultural one, as an opportunity to speak to the entire consumer in all of his or her complexity, not just the problem solver. [...]"

(from Grant McCracken: Why the iPad will flourish)

Reverse iEvangelism

2010-05-10T22:34:00.005-04:00

The other day, I got a call and unexpectedly (even for me) my iPad started ringing in my backpack. Since then, I found myself being the butt of my little boss' new running joke. He never left out an opportunity to ridicule me for my new oversized toy... at least not until he went out and bought himself two new iPads.

Since then, he's not even complained any more about my Mac's odd quirks... like two-finger scrolling. Soon he'll get used to Expose, and then it'll just be a short way to the next happy MacBooks owner.

Trip Wind-down, and iTrip!

2010-04-26T09:42:00.005-04:00

Finally I have arrived back in Baltimore. The US-JP-US-NL-B-LUX-D-NL-US trip has become more extended with every passing day, but in the end every plane finally followed its course with me on board, the Baltimore Light Rail didn't scare me off, and Bonny gave me a lift the last mile up the hill.

Still sorting through the thousands of pictures. The very evening I returned home LB phoned me, the next day we went to an inventor-entrepreneur speed dating event at Hopkins, now we're discussing the grant application to write, student issues - the usual lab life, in short. It's a good feeling to be back in the loop.

And! My new toy is on its way! And it's soo wxciting... usually they pass through Tennessee and Virginia and Kentucky and stuff... but not this time. This newest iToy is coming straight from the press! It'll basically still be warm when it arrives! :-)

Hm. And very soon I will have to consider what to do about the photo slide shows on this blog... they're Flash-based... and as by now everybody knows, Flash is inexorably on its way out...

Still Stranded

2010-04-17T17:23:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to reach either Expedia, Delta, or KLM for the last two days to find out what's going to happen to me... of course all of them will be severely understaffed these days to handle all the incoming calls.

However, when even the Internet reservation pages give me inconsistent (in the computing science sense, which means "wrong") data, this does not bode well for what will happen tomorrow. In the absence of clear information, the only possible way to go is for me to go to Schiphol and try to check in. Most probably I will be turned away (which wouldn't surprise me at this point), but the problem is that I am kind of cozy in Rotterdam at this time. My hotel is alright, I have Internet, and I do not have to stay day and night on the airport doing nothing. Once I arrive at Schiphol, I won't even have Internet to reserve a hotel or anything. But arranging accomodation before going is risky as well, because - who knows - maybe there will be flights, and cancellation usually entails penalties.

Even going to Paris (before its airports shut down as well) wouldn't work, because France is on strike.

At least I ordered this:

Delta/KLM Mess

2010-04-17T06:43:00.003-04:00

Gosh, what a mess! This comes from the same site, where I am trying to find out whether I can return tomorrow or not:

Stranded

2010-04-16T15:10:00.003-04:00

Hm. Looks like I am stranded in Europe!

...

Well. There could be worse places.
Still, it's not stranded at home or with friends, but in a country that writes things like "tot ziens" and "let op, drempels" and "te koop" and such stuff.

As our conference chair said, they're going to extreme lengths to keep the conference participants here until the last day.

Rotterdam, ISBI 2010, and Surprise

2010-04-15T12:13:00.003-04:00

Look look!

Mom and Sis have come for a surprise visit to Rotterdam (until Fri), where I am for a conference (until Sun)!

(As usual, pics after the original link.)

Time Shift

2010-04-14T08:36:00.001-04:00

I forgot where I am and what time it is.

The U.S. Delta (w.r.t. the rest of the civilized world)

2010-04-12T20:10:00.005-04:00

After travelling in Japan, I came back to the U.S. just for a short layover (less than twelve hours) before leaving again for the Netherlands.

However, the first leg of the trip out was a domestic flight, from Baltimore to Detroit. Not only is Baltimore the second-worst city in the U.S. in terms of criminal offenses (second only to Detroit), but also every time I am at its airport I encounter new lows in service.
Being a domestic flight - i.e. within the U.S. - it was doomed to be a crapshoot. Logically, it got delayed, then cancelled. Now I am stranded in America and have to wait until tomorrow before I can get out.
The line at the Delta counter consisted of maybe twenty people and took over an hour to move. There were three extremely slow service officers in the beginning. After twenty minutes, one of them got up, took his cap and waved his evening goodbye to the others and left, while the whole line was still waiting. In terms of corporate PR a complete disaster.

Also, not only will Delta probably not reimburse my lost night in the Rotterdam hotel, but also did I have to ask and wait for a taxi voucher to get back home. And checking in my luggage early to avoid carrying it back to the airport tomorrow was out of the question - "9/11".
Every crap service is excused in the U.S. by 9/11. Any decline in hospitality, politeness, common sense, and manners is excused by 9/11. Maybe the country has encased itself in its paranoia since then, but also it has left behind any resemblance to the good-service country that it was known as when I was small.

My taxi driver came from Eritrea, and he did not sound as if he praised the U.S. to be better in any way than his home country.

Overall (skipping all the boring because predictable annoyances that happened during the last 24hrs in America) it is hardly possible to attest to the U.S. any advantage over Japan - maybe apart from its language being familiar and its bigger rooms and houses.

Japan, April 2010

2010-03-31T18:23:00.002-04:00

I went to Tokyo for a couple of days to enjoy springtime and sakura, meet Yuki, and visit a lab at Tokyo U.

As usual, bigger pictures after the original link.

Wolfgang Wagner passed away

2010-03-22T21:36:00.001-04:00

On a somewhat different note, news from back in Germany: Wolfgang Wagner has passed away yesterday.

Considered the "keeper of the Grail", the grandson of Richard Wagner has directed the Bayreuth Wagner Festival for almost 60 years. During his reign, he pulled the Festspiele out of their Nazi-tainted past and ushered them into a new, modern style.

Although they were almost completely out of my field of view during my time in Bayreuth, the Festspiele define Bayreuth to a large degree, so their director is worth a moment of remembrance for me.

Wolfgang Wagner passed away

2010-03-22T11:06:00.002-04:00

On a somewhat different note, news from back in Germany: Wolfgang Wagner has passed away yesterday.

Considered the "keeper of the Grail", the grandson of Richard Wagner has directed the Bayreuth Wagner festival for almost 60 years. During his reign, he pulled the Festspiele out of their Nazi-tainted past and ushered them into a new, modern style.

Although they were completely out of my field of view, the Festspiele define Bayreuth to a large degree, so their director is worth a moment of remembrance for me.

This blog has moved

2010-03-13T12:20:00.001-05:00

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Baltimore Impressions, and some Art

2010-03-13T12:15:00.001-05:00

As usual, bigger pictures after the original post link.

Goat Eyes

2010-03-03T13:44:00.001-05:00

I simply stole this paper and repost it here. Hopefully this dude is too doped to notice.

Eustace P. Toffeynuts III, "Goat Eyes: Satanic ploy, or merely horrific crime against nature?"

Go Canada!

2010-02-28T18:42:00.004-05:00

And the medal statistics - from NBC, CBC, and Die Zeit! Interesting ordering :-)

From NBC:

From CBC:

And Die Zeit:

Liberty Lake, Carroll County, MA

2010-02-27T17:43:00.002-05:00

As usual, bigger pics in the original post after the click.

Ten Myths of Apple's iPad: 10. It needs Mac OS X

2010-02-27T17:04:00.001-05:00

Um. I don't think there is anything more to ask for.

Blackboard, anybody?

2010-02-24T14:58:00.002-05:00

Does anybody know anybody who works or worked on distributed blackboard communications architectures?

I have a real-time, high-data-rate, distributed multi-agent system that needs a stable communications infrastructure. I have a strong hunch that a BB would fit the bill... but I don't want to re-invent the wheel, and it seems that my Google and literature searches focus on the wrong keywords.

So I am looking for a solution, preferable an open-source toolkit, that implements such a blackboard.
Any idea, anybody?

SPIE-MI 2010, San Diego, II

2010-02-21T16:54:00.001-05:00

I just returned from the SPIE-Medical-Imaging conference in San Diego.
Unlike last time I have been to San Diego, this time I loved the place.
Loved, loved, loved the place.

What a year of Baltimore can do.

(As usual, big pictures after the click to the original post.)

Fraunhofer at Hopkins

2010-02-10T17:50:00.003-05:00

After fifteen months of work, the big "D-Day" of final demos has finally come. Lots of Fraunhofer representatives came to Hopkins for two days of presentations, demos, and discussions about the future of the collaboration.

(As usual, bigger pictures after the click.)

Snowstorm, Historic

2010-02-10T17:15:00.000-05:00

Low Expectations

2009-12-23T14:47:00.000-05:00

The other day, I asked M whether she is sometimes fed up about her students. She said no, she just has low expectations.

Same with flying in the U.S. I didn't even take off for the first leg to Philadelphia, and we're already 15min late.
It's just a farce that the only PA broadcasts are Dept of Homeland Security threat level advisories.
Threat level is orange. Same as always. No news about the delay.

Lost in modulo 360

2009-12-12T17:01:00.003-05:00

Finally somebody expressed the reason why I have difficulties to intuitively navigate in America.

(~~If anybody knows who to credit for this, please drop me a note.~~ Tun, thanks for the quote origin.)

LED Abuse

2009-12-12T16:10:00.003-05:00

Another fancy application which was news to me (I am not an electrical engineer, but rather a computing "scientist")... one can use LEDs for sensing.

I was made aware of this by two students of ours, wondering how this is achieved. We explored several ideas and finally came up with a concept that probably is exactly how it works in reality: LED as light sensor.

Fancy.

Magnetic Field Torque

2009-12-12T13:51:00.005-05:00

Last week, Edward Cheung from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, one of the engineers for the Hubble Space Telescope, visited the LCSR and gave a talk. Given that the Space Shuttle is to be retired after the next half-dozen flights, the talk scope changed to focus on the Shuttle technology. However, there were still some interesting details about the Hubble to be learned.

One of these details concerned the actuation of the telescope. As the Hubble has to stay operational for very long periods of time without any servicing missions, it doesn't have thrusters or boosters for orienting the telescope that would use up fuel. Instead, it uses inertial reaction wheel assemblies (that was what I expected), but also magnetic torquers (which was news to me). To keep the rotational speed of the RWAs within certain limits, the telescope can use metal bars that are extended and oriented into the magnetic field of the Earth as the Hubble traverses it, generating eddy currents in circuits through the bars and thus generating torque that turns the whole telescope (EDIT: or maybe not eddy currents, but rather a capacitor is discharged into the rod, cf. the link below?). The proper term seems to be "RWA momentum desaturation".

Properly awesome principle.
(For more info, look here. In fact, one control center for the Hubble is at the Space Telescope Science Institute just down the road, on my morning way to the parking lot.)

Strangely enough, these insights always come in pairs. Today, I saw an automatic tabletop globe in a catalog. Since it was an "organic" catalog (what is called "Öko" in German), it doesn't use batteries for rotation, but instead has a built-in photovoltaic cell. So far, so good; but the interesting part is that the globe sphere is embedded in an outer glass sphere that completely encases it, and there is no axis connecting the two spheres. In fact, the inner globe sphere is suspended in a thin layer of water within the outer sphere. And yet it moves. (10pts for proper quote attribution without googling.)

The catalog description claimed it uses "Earth magnetic field torque". Of course, having read up to here, the reader knows how it works, but I have to admit at first I thought "what a load of bull". Only then did I remember the magnetic torquers on the Hubble. Probably there is a magnetic rod similar to a compass needle mounted inside the globe sphere, and a photovoltaically powered motor inside the sphere torques the globe sphere against said rod. Voila, completely encapsulated torque actuation. Not a bad idea.

First Snow

2009-12-06T15:20:00.003-05:00

Saturday, first snow in Baltimore.

Saftiges Nierchen

2009-12-03T22:05:00.003-05:00

Hier ist ein Zwischenstand des Nierchenprojekts. Nicht das Ergebnis (3D-B-Mode-Ultraschall) ist entscheidend, sondern das Funktionieren der gesamten Modul-Pipeline bis dahin...

Noise Emissions

2009-12-01T13:28:00.003-05:00

When I came to the U.S., I wondered every day how people tolerate the continuous noise everywhere. Loud cars, air conditioners running all the time, trucks big and small on and off the campus... only very rarely is one of those particularly atrocious transport vehicles on the campus replaced by an electric one. Somehow, silence is not a value here.

(In fact, during my last visit to British Columbia in 2008 I invested two or three days just looking for a place that has no other noises but nature itself. It didn't work. Even in the most remote valleys I tried, there was always at least the hum of some distant plane.)

So I wondered whether there is any country anywhere that has noise emissions regulations, any rules that would govern how machines and devices are to be constructed in a noise-minimizing fashion, sanctioning their operation licenses. Indeed, Germany (and probably some other countries, too) has some laws that regulate noise immissions for workers and in habitated areas (workers have to wear protective gear, and home residents can force noise sources to be shut down), but this doesn't protect the average pedestrian on the street. I don't know of any place that has laws that apply to the engineering side of the equation - making devices quiet before they're built, instead of banning loud ones.

Now it seems that even places like Kenia have noticed that people need to be protected from excessive noise levels. I would not be surprised if neither Germany nor other European places, not to mention the U.S., actually cared about or legislated noise reduction in public places.

Breakthrough

2009-11-30T20:12:00.003-05:00

Today was one of those rare breakthrough days.

After many months of work, about 90% of the modules on our side of our Hopkins/Fraunhofer cooperation project that I am working on started working together.
The system consists of lots of separate reusable executables that "run anywhere" (meaning on any of our four or five project machines) and communicate with each other using mostly TCP/IP or shared memory. And over the course of the last two or three days, I figured out (with some help) the last remaining stumbling block to get the data constructed that the Fraunhofer people need.

It's about 8:20pm, so that means I can go home early.

Thanksgiving Lab Turkey

2009-11-26T23:29:00.001-05:00

What happened around the Thanksgiving turkey that Ioana and Brian invited us for.

As usual, click through for full picture glory.

Week before Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T23:10:00.001-05:00

Impressions from the week before Thanksgiving when Matthias came to Baltimore for the project integration testing.

As usual, click through for the slideshow.

Crawling Around with Baltimore Street Rats

2009-11-21T10:38:00.002-05:00

Baltimore and rats: They are smart enough (in a non-individual, Darwinian way) to ambush a garbage truck.

And of course there was this giant rat from China news.

Trouvaillen

2009-11-17T19:34:00.002-05:00

Tonight, a sudden flash of useless linguistic insight hit me.

The terms "syndrome" (a group of symptoms that consistently occur together), "concurrency" (esp. programs running in parallel), "Mitläufer" (sb. acting without having formed an own opinion), and "also-rans" (a loser in a race) syntactically all have the same components in their own languages - however, obviously their actual semantic meaning is completely unrelated in each!

Fascinating how the same expression evokes different meanings and feelings in different languages.

Then again, "współbieżny" actually means the same as "concurrent". And for some unrelated ridiculousness, check "współdzielić". (And it's almost unbelievable all those terms in the table there not only mean, but actually evoke all their different semantics!)

Culturalities (Siemens and Pizza)

2009-11-13T23:32:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, my little boss arranged a visit at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, where I had to give a talk. Luckily, the talk was about something that nobody really knew what it should be (meaning I could choose what to talk about). Sadly, I am still new in my field. Luckily, it went somewhat alright.

I learned that the NIH recently changed its scoring table for grant applications. Where they had a 1-to-5 scale before, in 2009 nothing less than a 1-to-9 scale is good enough. However, the first five categories are labeled "exceptional", "outstanding", "excellent", "very good", and "good". It could be a sign of an imbalance. Projects rated less than "outstanding" face a small chance of getting funded.

Today, I committed a cultural mistake. Ordering a chicken-and-green-pepper-pizza-with-soda-combo-number-three-for-here-thank-you, there was enough cash in my wallet (not BE "purse") to cover the check (not "bill") to cover it. Mistake part one was to pay cash in the first place. Mistake part two was to wait for six cents change. I realized this after the cashier closed the counter without returning my change, but it was too late to back out without embarrassment. So I tried to look around in a noncommittal way without moving an inch. Finally he got the hint, reopened the counter and handed over my six cents. Score for the German.