There’s a Cold Stone Creamery opening up in South Windermere in the spot Dolittles moved out of.
This is going to be like when I was living around the corner from the Haagen Daaz back home. At least back then I was running and cycling more than I am now.
Doomed, doomed I say!
Another programming language to learn
With the new Siemens Symbia SPECT/CT cameras comes yet another programming language I need to learn.
Nuclear medicine, unlike other imaging modalities, generally requires a good deal of technologist intervention to process, analyze and present the images. In an academic hospital setting, a lot of customized analysis and processing usually needs to be done. In the past, to handle these tasks most companies have provided their own proprietary programming/macro facility which generally don’t look much like conventional programming languages. Guess who gets to learn all those programming/macro environments and develop all those custom programs.
The first one I learned was the PIXIE macro language used on Picker’s Odyssey platform. Completely proprietary and bearing absolutely no resemblance to any programming language I had encountered at that point. Probably based on something, but what I couldn’t say. Keywords were delimited using a strange .keyword. syntax. Not to hard to use, but cumbersome when it came to creating displays for the data.
GE’s Xeleris platform uses Visual Basic with a custom library to provide access to the image data and perform various operations. A little more standard, easier to use, but somewhat sparsely documented. Still somewhat cumbersome to use when creating displays for the data, but at least it’s BASIC.
The Syngo platform that runs the Symbia cameras uses IDL for programming, which means I have to learn IDL and how it integrates with Siemens’ Syngo platform.
The good thing is that companies have dumped the proprietary programming/macro facilities and deploying more common development environments. I just wish they would all go with one language. Create their own libraries to deal with the images, but stick with one language to make it easier on folks like me who have to work in multi-vendor environments.
I don’t really care what language they pick. Just use the same one. That way all I need to learn are the libraries and objects each company uses rather than having to learn completely separate languages for each gamma camera I have to work with. And I’d also be able to develop one program that would work on all the cameras instead of having to maintain 2 or 3 versions of the same program. Oh, wouldn’t that be just marvelous!
Now, while TPTB figure out how and when they’re going to get me a license for IDL, I guess I’ll start playing with GDL (good thing I’m using Linux now) and figuring out what books to add to my library to learn IDL from.
Full of oysters
Today’s blogger gathering at Bowen’s Island Restaurant was fun and pretty well attended. Met a few new local bloggers which was nice. Always nice to see new faces at the blogger gatherings.
This was my first visit to the restaurant, but I’d definitely like to go back. It’s got a great location with a fantastic view of the sunset over the marsh. Figures I would forget to grab my camera.
There were 6 of us stuffing ourselves with all the oysters we could eat while the rest went for regular food. The oysters were plentiful and they were tasty. I think the oyster guy ended up dumping about 4 baskets of oysters onto the table for us. I was oystered out after the third one.
The conversation was pretty good too.
Acceptance!
Caught Simba playing with Hannah today the same way he plays with Nala. Yay! He’s finally accepted Hannah into the pack! No more growling when she comes near. This is a big milestone.
Her training is coming along quite nicely. She’ll sit on command now, almost has down down pat and goes into her crate willingly. Need to work on wait and stay and getting a good recall going. Now I can start taking her other places to work on commands too.
More Hannah
Now that Hannah’s starting to settle in a little more, I’m beginning to see some more of her personality come out.
She’s a really sweet girl, loves to be around her people, eats like there’s no tomorrow and totally food motivated. Training her has been pretty easy so far. She’s got a lot of energy, gets really excited (especially if there’s food involved) and seems like she’d get along pretty well with other dogs. I’ll have to give her a try at the dog park soon to check that out.
She walks pretty well on leash, but will definitely take off if she sees something interesting. She’s the kind of dog that needs a structured and disciplined (ordered) house to live in. If you let her have her way, she’ll take it and more. All she needs is consistency, a nice long walk by your side, a comfy spot to lay at your feet and she’ll be your best friend.
I think she’s still got a little more time to spend with me before she’s ready to go to a permanent home, but in the meantime I’m working hard to get her ship-shape and fattened up so that she’ll be a very well-behaved dog where ever she ends up going.
Anybody out there have room in their life for this sweetie?