Further ponder

We’ve started to master the OsiriX open source DICOM image viewer for Mac OS X. It really flies on the new Mac Pro, and I was flipping through the images from my most recent MRI, and trying to compare them with one of the first images, taken in 2006, before radiation and chemotherapy started.
I’ll have […]

Totter and ponder

Our walk this morning looped a mile over the bike-and-pedestrian path that runs adjacent to the Stanford golf course. As usual I pondered many weighty issues while I walked at a determined pace.
One momentous issue is whether the default Radeon HD 2600 graphics card in my new 8-processor-core Mac Pro is sufficiently powerful. I’ve handed […]

Betting on food

Big money is betting on food according to the New York Times, pouring money into farmland, fertilizer, storage, shipping and other infrastructure in the belief that food will only become more valuable in the future. After decades of surpluses (at least in the U.S.), the world is now facing a net shortage.
Indeed the planet is […]

That’s my girl!

This unposed picture captures 7-month-old granddaughter Grace as she hacked into the iTunes store, looking for her fave band, The Sippy Cups. Note that there is a powerful Dell PC on the desktop, but our girl is going for the Mac. Way to go, Gracie…

More country glory

Yesterday, I set out on the dirt roads that loop through the vineyards adjacent to Dave and Karen’s place. Walking out with Dave, and back with his son Tyler, I made 6000 steps in about an hour - a new personal best. This morning I walked 4000 steps in 40 minutes - a very encouraging […]

France? No, Potter Valley

I awoke this morning to the view of beautiful hillside vineyards. It would be easy to believe were still in France, but we’re visiting relatives in Potter Valley. To make us feel even more like we were in France, cousins Dave and Karen Rockel made us crepes and fruit for breakfast. I could get used […]

The new Mac Pro comes to life

So, we’ve been slowly getting the new Mac Pro together: I ordered RAM from Other World Computing ($350 vs. around $2,000 from Apple), moved over the hard drives from my former imaging workstation (now Linda’s computer), downloaded vital updates and software and otherwise been provisioning the new machine. Tomorrow we’ll do the (for me) hard […]

Cool pix from Mars

Amazing: the remarkable photo above shows NASA’s Phoenix lander suspended from its parachute shortly before landing. The picture was taken with a telephoto imager (aka the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera) aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The photo on left is one of Phoenix’s first snaps of its new home in Mars’ very chilly […]

Mars in the news

Planet Mars is back in the news this weekend: NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft will attempt one of the most dangerous landings ever tried. The lander will attempt to set down in Mars north polar region after negotiating a perilous 15-minute entry into the Martian atmosphere.
If Phoenix survives the first seven minutes of fierce buffeting and heating […]

The new Mac

Cue Jaws theme: we chose the Mac Pro, and not because other Mac models lacked power. Our big problem was that gulker.com’s World HQ was (literally) built around the tower form factor, we have to drive multiple monitors (iMacs will only drive one via DVI) and, yes, it’ll be fun to have a freakishly fast […]

« go back — keep looking »