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October 30, 2003
Isabel, NASA's Visible Earth, and Keychain Camera
Some massive natural disasters have happened in the last couple of months. Hurricane Isabel unleashed her power on the East coast, and the California wildfires are still going strong. I saw a website today which displays photographs with powerful messages about Mother Nature. NASA's Visible Earth, self-proclaimed as "a searchable directory of images, visualizations, and animations of the Earth". That is really cool. Some of these images would make great backgrounds.
New toy alert: a camera on a keychain. Check out this new product by Phillips. 64MB storage for 1.3 Megapixel pictures, recharge through USB, tiny device. I'm thinking about getting one of these already. Just think about all the picture opportunities you will not have to miss out on again!
Posted by Kathy at 01:37 PM | Permalink
October 27, 2003
SQUIDs and Their Medical Applications
I need a snazzier weblog, and I'm getting tired of static HTML entries. Movable Type seems to be the most appealing solution for me, since I want to host my own webserver as opposed to using someone else's servers to upload my entries to. So, I started to look at the requirements for running Movable Type. Need Apache. Check. Need MySQL. Check. Need to make sure MySQL is secured as much as possible. Working on it. Need all sorts of Perl modules. Working on it. Finally, need to move relevant files from the old webserver to the new webserver all the above packages will be located on. Double working on it. Initially, I wanted to load RedHat Linux on the new webserver. After several attempts including getting an exception handling error, which caused the entire installer to just die, I decided to just eschew RedHat Linux and use OpenBSD instead. The OpenBSD install worked like a charm. When all is said and done, I will have a much more scalable weblog engine. Priceless. Please look forward to my new weblog look soon!
At lunch with my co-workers, we were talking about Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs). I don't have much experience with these, since my focus area in my grad work was more VLSI-based devices. It sounds like a cool area, though. Especially interesting are the applications of SQUIDs. I'm thinking the medical applications for cardio devices, in particular. The elimination of electromagnetic interference is a major plus for cardio devices. I found this link from Livermore Labs that outlines research with medical applications for SQUIDs. Sometimes, I wish I had just stayed in the semiconductor/device physics field. *Sigh*
Posted by Kathy at 02:34 PM | Permalink
October 14, 2003
Mercury, Apollo, and a Monkey with a Robotic Arm
The kittens are doing much better now. Poor Apollo was sick for a little over a week. I'm glad to see that he and Mercury are romping around together again. They are now about nine weeks old, and entirely adorable. Their favorite things to do include finding us when we're in the computer room, and meowing to be picked up and placed on our laps for a nap. Very precious.
I haven't had much of a chance to get out of the house besides going to work lately, what with the kittens having been sick and all. I did see Cory Doctorow's posting on BoingBoing, though, of a really cool development with a monkey and a robotic arm. This application should people who are paralyzed, for example. I'm not sure how much experimentation has been done with fine muscle control movements. I mean, can these robotic arms eventually play the piano? That would be way cool.
Posted by Kathy at 02:38 PM | Permalink