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Dining with Robert

We had the pleasure of eating at Robert’s of Charleston for the first time last night. We’d read about the restaurant several times over the years since we’ve been here, and finally had a chance to make it there for dinner.

Robert’s is not your typical dining out experience. My first thought when I walked in was that it’s a lot smaller than I expected. There is seating space for about 36 or so, and judging from when we finished dinner, only one seating per evening. A very cozy environment, although it can get a little loud at times with everybody talking over the piano playing in the background.

If you go, be prepared for a bit of a long drawn out dining adventure. Dinner is a 5 course prix fixe menu (including white and red wines), which may sound a bit daunting at first. However, courses are served with enough time in between to give you and your fellow diners plenty of time to savour each dish, and then relax and digest a bit before the next course arrives. Seating started at 7:30, and we left around 10:30. Be prepared to take your time. There’s nobody rushing food to you or running you out the door so your table can be filled by the next party. You have all the time you need to enjoy and savour the food.

Then there is the singing. Chef Robert is, it seems a classically trained singer, and dinner begins with him singing in the appetizer as he walks around the room proudly displaying it to the guests. While the appetizer is being served by the rest of the wait staff, he sings a few more happy upbeat tunes. This happens several times throughout the night, making dinner almost a theatrical event and much fun.

The food is equally as good as Chef Robert’s singing. Starting with a sea scallop mousse (much tastier than you might think it could be) and finishing with a decadent slice of triple chocolate tart, it was probably one of the most enjoyable dining experiences I’ve had in Charleton. It’s a bit pricey though, so save your quarters before you go.

This is what was on the menu when we went

Sea Scallop Mousse, Maine Lobster Sauce
Fresh sea scallops blended with cream, eggs and baked
Fresh lobster broth emulsified with cream, Golden Beet relish
2001 Salmon Creek/Chardonnay or non-alcoholic California Chardonnay
Our Warm French Bread served with unsalted butter
Roasted Breast of Duckling
Oriental rice noodles – Orange ginger barbeque sauce
Mesclun Garden Greens and Radicchio
Fennel, Grape tomatoes, Calamata olives and Parmesan cheese
Virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and honey dressing
2001 R. H. Phillips Cabernet Sauvignon
Roasted Chateaubriand or our fresh fish of the day.
Port Sauce and truffle butter roasted tenderloin of beef to your liking
Port wine reduced with Beef broth
Black truffles suspended in creamery butter
Appropriate fresh vegetables seasoned with Roberts Original Seasoning
Triple Chocolate Tart, Wild Berry Sauce & Praline
A rich flourless cake infused with coffee liqueur served with fresh fruit and a sprinkling of praline powder
Lavazza Italian coffee or a selection of teas

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Review: NCRP 147 – Structural Shielding Design for Medical X-ray Imaging Facilities

Amazon’s review system apparently wasn’t working when I tried to submit this there, so I’ll put it here instead (I probably would have put it here anyway).

A few months ago, I unexpectedly received a fat FedEx envelope containing a draft copy of the much anticipated rewrite of NCRP 49: Structural Shielding Design and Evaluation for Medical Use of X-Rays and Gamma Rays of Energies Up to 10 MeV. Turned out it came to me because I’m on the AAPM Diagnostic Imaging Committee, and committee members were asked to review the draft to make sure there weren’t any glaring errors or anything. Sweet, so I dug in. Been hearing about this thing for years, and was eagerly awaiting it’s completion, like many other medical physicists out there.

A few weeks ago, I was rewarded for my efforts as a committee member reviewer by a surprise complimentary copy of the newly published NCRP 147. Even sweeter. And a hardcopy version to boot.

NCRP Report 147: Structural Shielding Design for Medical X-Ray Imaging Facilities

This is an invaluable upgrade to NCRP 49, and probably needs to be added to the collection of every medical imaging physicist that does shielding calculations. The focus is on shielding for imaging rooms, so there is much more relevant content for imaging physicists than there was in NCRP 49 which covered imaging and therapy shielding. New methods and techniques have been introduced which results in somewhat less conservative shielding requirements than what would have been required under the ultraconservative NCRP 49. Chapter 5 provides sample shielding calculations for just about every type of imaging room there is. This is a well written and much needed update to the original NCRP 49.

Even though I’ve already been through the draft, I’m going through it again, because this is the kind of thing medical physicists need to know like the back of their hand. Much of the content and calculations are similar to what was in NCRP 49, but there are enough new things in the rewrite that makes it worth studying thoroughly.

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Order of the Stick

Order of the StickMike put me onto this amusing online comic, The Order of the Stick that I think is just a hoot. Anyone who’s ever been into role playing games will find it funny. Anyone who’s hasn’t probably won’t see the humour in it at all.
It’s probably best to start at the beginning.

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Canada Q&A

My sister sent me these. I have no idea if they’re real questions (probably not) or something somebody made up (probably), but I thought they were pretty funny anyway.

Continue reading “Canada Q&A”

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Cataloging the library

Found this sweet little tool called OpenDB on Sourceforge.net. It’s an insanely flexible cataloging system, allowing you to define whatever types of objects you want. It comes with several pre-defined types (DVD, VHS, CD, Laser disc, VCD), but oddly enough no book type. You can define users and assign the ownership of each item to a user. If you’re always lending things out to people, you can keep track of that too.
Probably the best feature of the program though, are the plugins that let you do lookups against sites like Amazon.com, Internet Book List, FreeDB and IMDB. For books, all you need to do is enter the ISBN, do the lookup on Amazon and it fills in all the fields you’ve set up for the Book type you define. For other stuff, just enter Amazon’s ASIN and look it up. Entering a title will get you a list of possibilities. Click the one you want and all the fields are filled in for you. It’s awesome. No need to type in anything manually, which is probably the biggest barrier to create and maintain a comprehensive inventory of your stuff.
Runs on PHP and uses MySQL on the back end. The database schema is fairly small and compact for what it stores and tracks.
If you’ve got a collection of stuff you’re looking to keep track of, this is a cool bit of software to check out.