[BigBri.net]

Some posterize art with GIMP

One of my reservations in switching to Linux was Photoshop.  I really like Photoshop and I’m comfortable with it.  In order to get comfortable with GIMP, I decided to do a few little projects.  One of the filters that I really missed from photoshop was anisotropic filtering, but I found a wonderful filter for GIMP called Greycstoration.

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Ubuntu Linux [After a few weeks]

After a few weeks with Ubuntu 8.04, I can say that I’m ready to wipe the Windows partition for good.  I still have a few gripes, but for the most part - the money saved on software makes up for the minor frustrations.

Let’s start out with Kino: I used kino to put together a few little home videos.  I ran into problems immediately with capturing, but found that it was merely that I had to chmod (change permissions) on a file and I was off and away.  Adding effects with Kino is pretty awkward.  You have to apply the effects and then render a new file which is then inserted into the timeline.  This actually makes applying multiple effects, titles, or filters quite cumbersome.  At one point, I found that I had to export my movie and then re-open it to apply multiple effects.

Getting video to work smoothly on my websites accross multiple platforms has been a real headache.  I want my videos to be hosted by me and viewable in any browser.  I was excited to see that I could encode Flash videos with Kino, but I ran into some problems.  Exporting .flv files left me without any audio when I used the ffmpeg from the ubuntu repositories, so I had to get the copy from medibuntu.  Now I can export my movies in lots of different mp4 formats like h264, xvid, flv, etc.

Working with desktop gadgets got me a little pissed off.  gDesklets didn’t have a whole lot of widgets, and Screenlets were really unstable and unpredictable.  They would have strange startup behaviors, they wouldn’t stay where I put them, etc.  I ended up giving up entirely.  I may try Prism or Google Desktop sometime.

Avant window manager is great.  I did have a few problems.  First off, if you want to use any cool features, you can’t use the copy in the repository - you have to get it from their repository.  The upside to this is that they do provide frequent updates.  Sometimes it uses an application’s default image rather than the icon theme that I applied with GTK. The other big annoyance is that I can’t empty my trash using either of the included applets, so I have to start gnome panel, empty the trash, and then close the gnome panel.  Getting the gnome panel to stay closed requires you to use a button in the session manager that says “remember current applications”.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to undo or “forget” once you click that button and return to a default state.

My final annoyance is standards.  I thought I would be ready to rock with firefox installed, but as it turns out I can’t view videos at nbcolympics.com because silverlight only works on windows or mac.  Microsoft isn’t the only culprit, though.  I get an error message at mac.com, too!

School Districts

Lara spent some time mapping out the nearby school districts from Upland to Rialto and then ranking them 1-5 stars based upon publicly available test score data. 

• Red: 1 star
• Yellow: 2 stars
• Light Green: 3 stars
• Medium Green: 4 stars
• Dark Green: 5 stars
• Pink: No data
• No color: Industrial area - No residences

To see the map full screen in your browser with the names of individual school districts, click here.

Linux

I’ve used Linux on my laptop for a while, now.  About a year and a half ago I installed Ubuntu dual-boot style with XP.  Unfortunately, I found that it was just too much work for something that felt half-baked.

Allow me to explain:  I am a user - I don’t like using a terminal.  When I found that my wireless card didn’t work (I have a Broadcom b43XX chipset), I had to do a lot of work to get it operational.  I had to download headers, compile source code, extract firmware, etc.  Let me say, though - the Ubuntu community is very helpful, and it wasn’t hard to find the advice I needed.  It just took a lot of typing.

When I was using Ubuntu 7, I felt like things lacked polish.  The screen fonts looked awful, I had trouble mounting my ntfs volume, NVIDIA drivers were a nightmare, beryl crashed my system, etc.

After a year away from my laptop, I recently dusted it off to do some studying in the guest room.  I figured I’d give Ubuntu another chance, and I downloaded the latest version and installed it.

I must say that the everything is a bit more polished now.  The install was a breeze - it took about 20 minutes.  My ntfs partition was easily mounted as /windows.  I didn’t have to screw around with multiple packages to get the good stuff - like TT fonts and DVD playback.  I just installed the restricted packages - ONE THING!  For some reason, screen fonts and fonts in Open Office look much better.  The hardware drivers dialog got my wireless working with a few mouse clicks, and my NVIDIA driver installed in a snap!  The desktop effects add a little wow factor, and everything just seems much nicer.

The things I love about Linux:

• My hardware just works.  No searching for a scanner driver and then finding that the installer dumped a bunch of crapware onto my computer.  I just plug my scanner in and start scanning!
• Installing applications is a breeze.  The Add/Remove programs feature is amazing!  Never again will I have to search for some freeware version of what I need - It’s ALL freeware, and it’s just a click away!

My big reservation before was all the great software I had - like Photoshop, Premiere, etc.  After working with GIMP and Kino for a while, I’m starting to get used to them now.

I have to admit - I haven’t wiped XP from the laptop yet, but I almost always boot into Ubuntu now when I have a choice.

Glossectophobia

I was depositing some checks at the ATM yesterday, and I was in a bit of a rush.  I was trying to keep Devin under control as I swiped my card and punched in my numbers.  I stuffed the checks into an envelope and whisked the flap across my tongue.  The stinging sensation of the paper cut I got gave me an immediate flashback to the week before, when at a banquet I was licking the envelope for a thank you card to a preceptor.  The intern accross the table from me said “Aren’t you afraid you’ll cut your tongue?”  I shot her a puzzled look like: “Why should I be afraid of something like that?”

So I have created a new word from greek word roots: Glossectophobia - fear of cutting your tongue!

Callbacks

It was kind of surreal being back in the classroom again.  I really had a hard time being there at first.  You see, none of the testing or anything we did counts toward a grade.  I felt really unmotivated, but then I remembered how stressed out Western students always are over their shelf exams, and I felt a little better.  

Of course, we also got to see where all our tuition was going.  300k went into upgrades in the OMM lab.  It’s really impressive.  They have HD video with three cameras and about twenty monitors.

Tonight we got to play a little euchre with Collin and Brian.  I caught them both “in the barn”.

How [not] to place a central line

So I’m sleeping peacefully at 0600 after an average night of medicine call, when my intern bursts into the call room and says “wanna do a central line?”  I jumped up out of bed and threw on my white coat saying simply: “let’s go.”

As we walked upstairs I started to ask him about the patient, but my mind was still a bit cloudy as I was trying to wake up.  He asked me if I was OK to do the line and I said: “metabolic encephalopathy - need coffee”  He told me to meet him on Med Surg, and I made a quick trip to the ICU where the coffee pot had a note written on a napkin “fresh as of 0615″.  ICU always has the best coffee.

We spent almost an hour talking consent - even though the guy was A&O X3, he wanted his wife to consent for him.  I wanted to say “grow a pair, dude”.  Finally we got consent and wrote an order for sedation when the nurse came back and said: “Um…he doesn’t have IV access - that’s why we’re doing the line.”  We decided to go to breakfast while we waited for the IM morphine to get to work.

When we got back I explained to him in my broken spanish: “Necessito poner un linea en su cuello!  Es muy importante que no se mueve la cabeza!”  I always yell in spanish.  I guess I think that it increases comprehension or something.

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Making Thumbdrives [almost] Obsolete

For the past few years I’ve had a file management script that I’ve been using. At first, it was just a convenience for sharing files with classmates, but lately I’ve been using it more and more. A lot of the computers at our hospital don’t do thumbdrives well, and while others have been attaching files to e-mails and using their webmail to access them, I just login to my file manager. With the webhost I use now, I have unlimited storage - and any computer with internet has access to it! It’s also really nice for transferring files that are too large for e-mail. The only downside is that really large files are difficult to upload with php, so I do still use the thumbdrive for some things.

I use filethingie on my site. It’s a single php flatfile (only 100k) that does everything without a database. The only issue with most hosts is php upload limits. Just add something like this to your php.ini file:


file_uploads = On
upload_max_filesize = 24M
post_max_size = 24M
memory_limit = 48M

Obviously the #1 concern with anything of this nature is security, so you might want to use .htaccess to restrict access to wherever your passwords reside.

That’s it!

For those of you that don’t have your own website and hosting, there are other ways to store files online. One of the more popular ways is by using a Gmail account for online storage. There are also many popular file storage sites like Xdrive.

Devin Does OMT

We were all hanging out at Kevin and Ian’s house one evening - giving each other treatments, when Devin jumped up and started cranking on my neck!

Webhost Review

If you visited my site within the last few weeks you may have noticed it was down. I recently switched hosts. I took advantage of several hosts’ money-back guarantees to take them for a test-drive. I assumed that most of them would be good, and better than my old host. What’s interesting is that I ran into a lot of problems - even with the big-name hosts.

I took a few days to run some performance tests, and I uploaded all my content so that I could thoroughly evaluate all of them. I decided to publish my results because I had a hard time finding quality webhost reviews out there that compared hosts head-to-head.

I ended up being a little wordy (for the sake of complete disclosure). So if you just want to skip to the end - there’s some great performance graphs and comparison charts down there.

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