First Snow

Saturday, first snow in Baltimore.

Saftiges Nierchen

Hier ist ein Zwischenstand des Nierchenprojekts. Nicht das Ergebnis (3D-B-Mode-Ultraschall) ist entscheidend, sondern das Funktionieren der gesamten Modul-Pipeline bis dahin...

Breakthrough

Today was one of those rare breakthrough days.

After many months of work, about 90% of the modules on our side of our Hopkins/Fraunhofer cooperation project that I am working on started working together.
The system consists of lots of separate reusable executables that "run anywhere" (meaning on any of our four or five project machines) and communicate with each other using mostly TCP/IP or shared memory. And over the course of the last two or three days, I figured out (with some help) the last remaining stumbling block to get the data constructed that the Fraunhofer people need.

It's about 8:20pm, so that means I can go home early.

Thanksgiving Lab Turkey

What happened around the Thanksgiving turkey that Ioana and Brian invited us for.



As usual, click through for full picture glory.

Week before Thanksgiving

Impressions from the week before Thanksgiving when Matthias came to Baltimore for the project integration testing.



As usual, click through for the slideshow.

Crawling Around with Baltimore Street Rats

Baltimore and rats: They are smart enough (in a non-individual, Darwinian way) to ambush a garbage truck.

And of course there was this giant rat from China news.

Culturalities (Siemens and Pizza)

Yesterday, my little boss arranged a visit at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, where I had to give a talk. Luckily, the talk was about something that nobody really knew what it should be (meaning I could choose what to talk about). Sadly, I am still new in my field. Luckily, it went somewhat alright.



I learned that the NIH recently changed its scoring table for grant applications. Where they had a 1-to-5 scale before, in 2009 nothing less than a 1-to-9 scale is good enough. However, the first five categories are labeled "exceptional", "outstanding", "excellent", "very good", and "good". It could be a sign of an imbalance. Projects rated less than "outstanding" face a small chance of getting funded.

Today, I committed a cultural mistake. Ordering a chicken-and-green-pepper-pizza-with-soda-combo-number-three-for-here-thank-you, there was enough cash in my wallet (not BE "purse") to cover the check (not "bill") to cover it. Mistake part one was to pay cash in the first place. Mistake part two was to wait for six cents change. I realized this after the cashier closed the counter without returning my change, but it was too late to back out without embarrassment. So I tried to look around in a noncommittal way without moving an inch. Finally he got the hint, reopened the counter and handed over my six cents. Score for the German.

Autumn ("Fall")

Autumn (also known as "fall" here) in Mt. Washington and Baltimore County.



As usual, click through for the images. (Tekkno, view them in fullscreen. You'll like what you'll see.)

Abstract Space Mouse

Is this worth a conference submission?

Spikes

As usual, click through to the album.

Rainy Day

Rainy day. No go out.



Images - hit the link.

More Billions

Today, no new absurdities. Instead, some news.

The Johns Hopkins University has again topped the NSF Research Funding ranking (for the n-th year straight). In fiscal year 2008, it spent almost 1.7 billion USD. Almost half of it went for the Applied Physics Lab APL, for DARPA- and NASA-sponsored research.
That's up 8% from last year, while inflation in the U.S. over the last year hovered at around zero.

SPIE Symposium on Medical Imaging 2010

"SPIE Paper Number 7625-53 Acceptance and Manuscript Information

Dear Philipp J. Stolka,

On behalf of the chairs for the upcoming "Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Modeling" conference, it is my pleasure to confirm the acceptance of your submission, "A 3D-elastography-guided system for laparoscopic partial nephrectomies." This conference is part of the SPIE Symposium on Medical Imaging which will be held February 13-18, 2010 in San Diego, California USA.

PRESENTATION DETAILS
Paper Number: 7625-53
Presentation Type: oral
Presentation Date: 16 Feb 2010
Presentation Duration: 20 minutes [...]"

This is in addition to the three other papers that got into this conference that also have my name on it... somehow.

You are a statistic

I have been in the U.S. for slightly less (to be precise, three days) than a year, and in best Baltimore statistics manner, we became victims of a crime.

Today our house was broken into, i.e. people came, made an incredible mess, and left with a sizable bunch of valuables. My landlady seems to have surprised them when she returned home, but luckily the burglars seem to have left the house in another direction, so nothing happened to her.

The house was a total mess, judging from what I was told... with the biggest chaos in my room. Even after my landlady (before I returned after work) has cleaned up, there was still stuff everywhere. Overall, computers, watches, and all kind of valuables disappeared. Including a very heavy safe.

In my room, a MacBook, a (still fairly good) photo camera, a monitor, hard disks, a PDA, a check book, and all kinds of big and small things were on open display. But, incredibly enough, I am missing nothing. I seem to have lucked out; they got surprised before they could make off with all of my stuff. Instead, they overturned every box, cupboard, trunk, drawer, and paper and book stack they could find in my room.

And, they brought a bottle of Bacardi Rum into my room.

America Through The Lens Of

Recently I travelled a bit, got a very cheap close-up lens, and met people.



As usual, click through the link to the original post/pictures.

Probably the longest double in the world

Everybody knows doubles can become pretty large. How large, exactly, was a mystery to me until I ran into a voxelspace allocation issue today. I had to copy the mm-value out of the debugger to properly assess its size. Now I am pretty confident that doubles can grow at least up to 17 inches and a bit. That's slightly more than one-point-four foot, I think. Or square root of two feet. Or foot. Not to confuse with two square foot. Big foot.


Click the image for full-foot glory.

A Weekend - Housemates and Annapolis

As usual, hit the link to the original post and see the picture slideshow.

Hopkins, One Year Later

Last week, my little boss extended my contract here at Hopkins for another year. (End of newsflash, opinion piece follows.)

(I just looked up the term "op-ed", which I had presumed to mean "opinion-editorial" or sth. like that. However, it means, "opposite of the editorial page". How good I didn't embarrass myself.)

So, I've spent almost eleven months at Hopkins by now, working in Little Boss' ultrasound lab. I learned a lot about the use of ultrasound in interventional settings, about ultrasound physics, about elastography, registration, about hardware, about compilers, code optimization, and linkers, and also about students, student life, guiding students, running a lab, acquiring projects, running collaborations, and politics. Life at a private research university is stressful (luckily, I am blissfully shielded from funding acquisition almost completely).

In fact, X told me long ago that a) I would love the country for its gadgets (true), and b) I would learn how to work properly at Hopkins (also true). Unless one makes a very conscious decision to get out of lab in the evenings, one gets absorbed.

Now I am looking down the barrel of another year at Hopkins, in Taylor's LCSR, in Emad's MUSiiC lab, where by now I have seen people come and go, have seen students grow and students break, with reasonable researchers and crazy scientists, with personal quarrels and project vendettas.
It's a big place, it's got lots of people, and every day brings about a new piece of wisdom, knowledge, or at least some insight.

Mt. Washington is a quiet, green suburb. Sitting at my breakfast table on the rear deck, there is one other house that can be seen peeking through the forest. Squirrels, raccoons, and deer abound, with foxes here and there. Admittedly, one can hear the expressway in the valley when the wind is coming the wrong way, and the police helicopters' din is a staple of Baltimore life. Luckily, East Baltimore and "Death Valley" (north of JHMI) are far away.

Overall, it's a good experience. You get to work with great people, have captivating projects, get to work on your own ideas, push some publications, and have an agreeable life. In my private life, I am no smarter than I was before. Still, I'm looking forward to the beginning of year two.

Homewood, Medical School, and Mt. Washington

A few random pics from when my Mom was here for a visit.



As usual, hit the link and view the original post.

Baltimore Artscape, and Lab space

Two completely unrelated picture sets, one from the annual Baltimore Artscape festival that regularly draws crowds to music, art sales, movies, and food, and one from our lab, deserted at night.



As usual, click on the slide show to see bigger pics.

2010 JHFCU Calendar

"Congratulations on having your photo(s) selected for JHFCU’s 2010 calendar photo contest. We received many entries and had only a limited number of slots, so we picked the photos that we felt best represented the Hopkins community and Baltimore area. [...]"

Since I sent them three and got only limited information, I guess that the one below got chosen! The value of the R1 got proved again!



(Yes, I know the pic is full of artifacts. However, I only accept criticism from somebody who has ever tried to take pictures of dark objects against the sun in snow conditions.)

Triple Woes

First, I canceled one of my two German bank accounts, the one that had a VISA card going with it.

Then, a late charge came in for this account, resulting in an overdraft. I was sent an overdraft notice, which got lost at my Germany place in a stack of mail.

Third, I got wind of that and duly paid the overdraft fee from my other German bank account.

Soon after, I got another overdraft notice, claiming that I still have to pay the amount, now with twice the fees.

At the same time, my Skype account suddenly got blocked, preventing me from calling Germany or any other place. Skype doesn't react to Customer Service Requests.

I suspect they tried to draft some $$$ from a PayPal account that had been linked with the now-defunct VISA card (as mentioned above), so I tried to change the way of payment to my American VISA card. However, PayPal claims that card is already associated with another account (which I can't understand, since there is no other account). PayPal similarly doesn't react to customer requests.

Thus, I am left with:
- a German bank threatening to call in the SCHUFA credit history agency,
- a dysfunctional Skype account and no phone calls,
and
- a dysfunctional PayPal account.

I cannot call the German bank to clarify the issue, because Skype doesn't work.
I cannot get Skype to work, because the account pages are completely locked up and tell me to file a Customer Service Request.
And I cannot get PayPal to work, because it tells me I can't use my credit card.

**** ***, Skype.
**** ***, PayPal.
And **** *** ***, U.S.!

Oh, and I finally reached the bank hotline. However, they are closed and don't offer any clue as to when they'll reopen. **** ***, Postbank!

Saturday's "First Annual DMIP Beach Retreat" - Radiology organized this year's 2nd retreat, this time with no science at all!

Boston & ISBI 2009

The other week, I've been to Boston, MA to attend the ISBI 2009 conference together with Matthias of Fraunhofer.

2009 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS)

Re: Abstract ID: 1044
Abstract Title: 5DOF Trajectory Reconstruction for Handheld Ultrasound with Local Sensors

Dear Philipp Stolka:

We are pleased to inform you that the above referenced abstract has been accepted for Poster presentation during the 2009 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS). The symposium will be held from September 20-23, 2009 at the Ergife Palace Hotel, Roma, Italy.

[...]

Luckily I didn't hand in the abstract under its working title "Bastard SpaceMouse".

Kittykat Tyrone!

This cute little tiny kittykat has been with us for a few days (somebody had to babysit it). The other two cats were completely irritated by this CUTE TEENY KITTY!

Lancaster, PA (Party like it's 1899!)

On Saturday, we went to Lancaster, PA, the center of the Amish population (maybe in the U.S., but definitely on the East Coast), also known as Dutch County (even though they are originally of German origin).
Following a conservative religious lifestyle, they usually forfeit all modern amenities like cars, electricity, and telecommunications. However, they can adapt, and in particular they can party (like it's 1899)!

Robofest 2009

Every year, the LCSR enjoys a Robofest - a picknick organized by one of its labs in round-robin fashion.
This Sunday, the Robofest 2009 took place in Rocky Point Park near Baltimore. As my Mom came by for a visit the day before, I took her along to meet my fellows here.



(As usual, hit the link http://picasaweb.google.com/philipp.j.s/RoboFest2009LightAndShadow# or click the above slideshow to embiggen the pics on Picasa).

Discover Centralia, PA!

We're going to Centralia, PA!

Mostly colleagues from LCSR and DMIP went to Centralia, PA last Sunday: http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/Visiting-Centralia.htm and here: http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Centralia,+PA&geocode=&dirflg=&saddr=baltimore,+md&f=d&sll=40.804503,-76.340883&sspn=0.008917,0.019312&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=8.

In a nutshell, this city sat atop a coal mine that was accidentally set ablaze. The fire migrated underground, where it has now been burning for forty years, stubbornly thwarting any efforts to put it out and slowly consuming the city's foundations. As a consequence, the city had to be given up and was abandoned. Nowadays, the ground is hot, is spewing steam and smoke, and on and off caves in (in what is technically called "subsidences").

Of course, we couldn't resist the temptation to see this hellish place first-hand.

JHU Robofest 2009

Saturday, the robotics people at Hopkins organized a "Robofest" - lots of young kids from neighboring highschools came in and competed in several different robotics tasks... like finding dark spots or navigating a slalom course.



As usual, larger pictures after the click (on the slideshow above).

Early Morning

It's Sunday 2:30am, and the robotics lab is still busy with people working. PJS submitted his abstract, so felt entitled to go home... although this leaves a slightly guilty feeling behind.

Outside, birds are singing in the trees.

This is America.

DMIP Retreat 2009

Last Monday, the JHMI DMIP (the department where my little boss has his primary affiliation) had its annual retreat at Oregon Ridge Park north of Baltimore. Kind of Watschenfeld, only with 3x as many people and 1/3rd the available time.

PJS presented an awesome project proposal idea. However, it is still just an idea. And, PJS got an award - not for technical or scientific excellence, but for being the first on location (no, really).

Wildlife!

Raccoons are visiting us (rather the birds' feeding box) regularly!



(As usual, click slideshow for full view.)

New York New York (duet w AO)

Baltimore in Spring

ISBI 2009

Dear Matthias Keil, Philipp J. Stolka, Marion Wiebel, Georgios Sakas, Elliot R. McVeigh, Russell H. Taylor, Emad Boctor,

We are happy to inform you that your paper:

#1572: ULTRASOUND AND CT REGISTRATION QUALITY: ELASTOGRAPHY VS. CLASSICAL B-MODE

has been accepted for presentation at ISBI 2009. [...]

Baltimore in Technicolor

Old and new impressions of Baltimore in Technicolor.
(See this also at Picasa Web Albums.)



More recent impressions:

da Vinci S

Today, the LCSR got a new robot - a da Vinci S from Intuitive.

From Da Vinci S

Patch And Pray

At least I am not suffering from paranoia on this front: U.S. roads are in a deplorable state. Of course one is spoiled when having used German streets, but still the sheer amount of huge potholes here isn't exactly a symbol of pride for a First World country. Everything else about the infrastructure, from bridges to water management, seems to be in similarly poor shape, and now it's official (again).

Bröselnde Brücken, undichte Wasserleitungen
2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure

Furthermore, to feed my cyberchondria, I have taken a self-test about "autistic spectrum disorder" (a less flashy version is here in English).
The results... well, like every decent cyberchondriac, I should go and see a doctor.

Here's to another crazy day

Recently, Balto is covered under a closed layer of ice. Snow has fallen, melted, and coalesced into a cracking, slippery, hard cake-icing-like blanket.


Another crazy day.

After lunch, I had to do a presentation of half a dozen project ideas for students' course projects in Taylor's "Computer-Integrated Surgery 2" in my PI's absence. The students kept their pokerfaces under a barrage of prime ideas from a couple of researchers here... they must be tough vis-a-vis the incessant displays of brillance around them. Or maybe they were just tired.

Late lunch, then another event - "FACEBOOK 101: Demo Day - The New 'Face' of the Web". In an intersession course, students had developed a bunch of Facebook applications all revolving around video and photos, and today was demo day. They dispersed around a bunch of laptops in the lounge area upstairs and showed off what they had invented and implemented during those three weeks.


Afterwards, another PhD student approached me with yet another project idea we could co-mentor in the afore-mentioned CIS2 course - so back to PowerPoint to whip up another inspiring slide, after discussing how much is too much for a semester project. At Hopkins, students regularly have to sign NDAs about their engineering projects.

Just when I believed the day would be over, my desk neighbor approached me and reminded me of today's dinner outing. So a bunch of colleagues started moving, avalanche-like, towards a nearby dinner bar. Astonishingly enough, a few of them are smokers, as it turned out afterwards.


And, I got myself into the vortex of classes here... or seminars. Finally, after so many years, medical computing science (after high school, initially I contemplated studying that) and I finally meet in terms of actual courses.

Impressions

Homewood.


Gefräßiger Plapperkäfer von Traal:
"Ein zum Verrücktwerden dämliches Vieh, es nimmt an, wenn du es nicht siehst, kann es dich auch nicht sehen - bescheuert wie eine Bürste, aber sehr, sehr gefräßig."



From Eadweard Muybridge's time-lapse photographs of a man riding a galloping horse.



From Homewood.

Obama Was Here!

Today was a big day in Baltimore's history: Obama passed through the city on his train "Whistle Stop Tour" to Washington DC for the inauguration on Jan 20. Maybe this was not one of the greatest days Balto has ever seen (I don't know enough of its history yet), but definitely a major thing.



Obama obviously copied a travel that before him another president-elect had undertaken - Abraham Lincoln, commonly seen as one of the greatest presidents of the U.S., and who guided the country through one of its greatest challenges, the Civil War. Obama alluded to great difficulties ahead as well, talking of the economy in blood-sweat-and-tears terms.





He obviously drew a huge crowd (Maryland having been one of his staunchest supporters in the elections), the anticipation of which had driven mayor Sheila Dixon (a black woman, in a city of around 2/3 blacks) to instate road closures across a large part of downtown. Instead of opening the streets up to people completely, they were instead partitioned into go- and no-go-streets, and then in turn cascaded into a kind of gigantic rat maze that the visitors had to pass through, circumnavigating the same blocks over and over from different sides, completely uselessly and annoyingly. Obama's speech (as well as MLK III's and the (probably) governor's before) were transmitted on big screens across downtown.