Baltimore Impressions, and some Art

As usual, bigger pictures after the original post link.

Go Canada!

And the medal statistics - from NBC, CBC, and Die Zeit! Interesting ordering :-)

From NBC:


From CBC:


And Die Zeit:

Liberty Lake, Carroll County, MA

As usual, bigger pics in the original post after the click.

Snowstorm, Historic

First Snow

Saturday, first snow in Baltimore.

Noise Emissions

When I came to the U.S., I wondered every day how people tolerate the continuous noise everywhere. Loud cars, air conditioners running all the time, trucks big and small on and off the campus... only very rarely is one of those particularly atrocious transport vehicles on the campus replaced by an electric one. Somehow, silence is not a value here.

(In fact, during my last visit to British Columbia in 2008 I invested two or three days just looking for a place that has no other noises but nature itself. It didn't work. Even in the most remote valleys I tried, there was always at least the hum of some distant plane.)

So I wondered whether there is any country anywhere that has noise emissions regulations, any rules that would govern how machines and devices are to be constructed in a noise-minimizing fashion, sanctioning their operation licenses. Indeed, Germany (and probably some other countries, too) has some laws that regulate noise immissions for workers and in habitated areas (workers have to wear protective gear, and home residents can force noise sources to be shut down), but this doesn't protect the average pedestrian on the street. I don't know of any place that has laws that apply to the engineering side of the equation - making devices quiet before they're built, instead of banning loud ones.

Now it seems that even places like Kenia have noticed that people need to be protected from excessive noise levels. I would not be surprised if neither Germany nor other European places, not to mention the U.S., actually cared about or legislated noise reduction in public places.

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.

Late Summer, Mt. Washington

Pictures from a later summer bike ride around the neighborhood.

Combines Absurdity and Grossness

I am not sure what to chalk this gross abomination up to. Is it America? Is it the hunting community? Is it some deranged jerks?

Don't watch the following promotional video if you get grossed out by gross grossness.



As usual, click through for full gory glory.

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)!

LEGO Heaven

I cannot complain too much.

Today, our mechanical engineering maven agreed with me that my LEGO-based approach seems feasible.
Later, I went searching for LEGO in our lab and found a whole room full of LEGO... up to the ceiling.
Now, I got a few boxes (only a selection of them is shown below), an iced tea, and found myself a quiet secluded spot with a great view over the campus greens... it feels like being a kid all over again :-)

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).

Hobby, Work, and the Value of Colleagues

It is important to have your work be your hobby... and maybe your hobby be your work.
This is the case with my task here. I enjoy it.

And although programming is just a small part of it, it is very enjoyable, too. Even though I have to admit that I learned more about programming and learned more from my (ex-)colleagues while I was at UBT. Honestly, my programming skills (no matter how limited) have grown tremendously while working with some of my old labmates.

First and foremost Techno and Dabbelju, I really appreciate all the little and also the bigger things that I learned from you. They still help me every day in programming, debugging, and profiling.

(As I have said a long time ago, I brought my T_Matrix<T,homo> class with me, and I use it proudly ;-). Over the last week, I spent way too much time working with it, and I learned a lot about programming, C++, and my own old faults during that time. And while I whittled away at some old bugs and shortcomings, its performance just today increased from 2fps through 4fps and 6fps all the way to 23fps.
When this happened I called it a day.)

Fun with Numbers! (The Washington University Way)

(With the fun in the fine print (click image to embiggen); from Washington University Engineering.)

Unit Bloat

Awesome. Every week in the U.S. brings about another weird unit.

"Southern Utah’s Lake Powell was once teeming with boaters, fishers and vacationers. But from 2000 to 2005 its water level dropped from 20 million to 8 million acre-feet, due to severe drought. [...]"

How the 2nd Battery was Lost and Found

The improbable story of the disappeared battery, with particular focus on its incomprehensible reappearance after it was already given up for good and considered lost forever.

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:

hp

Here is another aspect of life in America that I haven't understood yet.

Of what use are the large engines, having some three to eight liters of displacement (btw, why is this measured in liters, not in quarts or gallons or fl. oz.?), when one cannot use them anywhere except for a racing-style head start at the traffic lights? Highways are limited to 60 or 70 mph everywhere, and for good reason.

But this results in something else, an experience that is probably unknown to the average American car driver... the feeling of the engine being maxed out, not yielding more power any more, once you have reached the car's top speed, determined by a combination of engine power, wind resistance, and road slope and curvature. The neurons which convey an intuitive feel of this subtle relationship at around 180-220km/h must be missing from an American brain. Or maybe they are used for other things. Maybe marksmanship.

Canadian English

Click cromulent image to embiggen.

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.

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.

Crisp Baltimore

Baltimore is a city of contrasts. This set of images reflects this fact.

View from JHMI towards downtown.


Somewhere in downtown.


The Baltimore Correctional Institutions.


Same as Venice, Baltimore has its own Ponte dei Sospiri... a bridge where the delinquents have a last chance to see the daylight. However, Baltimore's version has no real windows.


A nondescript parking lot.


The Inner Harbor area. This place had been completely desolate thirty years ago, a crime-infested slum dump. Then the remaining inhabitants got relocated, the area razed to the ground, and new development was started. Nowadays, it is a nice tourist spot, although not really enticing to visit regularly.

Baltimore By Night

Baltimore by night has a charm of its own... as long as you don't stray from the safe areas.

The Homewood campus (probably the Decker Quad, but I really can't remember the names).


View of downtown from near Johns Hopkins Hospital.


The JHMI basement lab, in a lamentable state of near-dissolution due to construction.

As the Rich Get Poorer, Teenagers Feel the Crunch

From the New York Times, December 12, 2008:
As the Rich Get Poorer, Teenagers Feel the Crunch

Since the 1990s, many affluent children seeking admission to selective colleges have been discouraged from paid work, and steered instead toward volunteer service projects. Rebuilding homes in New Orleans or teaching English in developing countries, seemingly better résumé fodder, supplanted after-school or summer jobs scooping ice cream or answering phones.

“There’s been such a push to demonstrate to colleges that they’re involved with activities and charities that it’s almost too pedestrian to say that work is part of what I do,” said William S. Miron, the principal at Millburn High School.

Life and Death of a Kidney

The kidneys ended their lives in this place - a slaughterhouse in Mt. Airy, some 35 miles out of Baltimore. It seems that when it comes to food and health, America acknowledges there might be drawbacks to individualism, and restricts slaughtering to only a few places.


The warm kidney were put on ice and later went on to be soaked with physiological sodium chloride solution (I learned that's the name of plain NaCl solution) to rinse them.


I specifically ordered kidneys for research, not for food. This means they came with all their plumbing still attached.


However, their plumbing was not useful for our research. We need to circulate contrast agent through them, so I worked for most of the day to graft some valves onto them. During this comparatively menial task I learned that kidneys have only three tubes connecting them to the outside world - renal artery, renal vein, and urethra.


Once set up, they were ready to undergo internal rinsing. There is an astounding capability to hold water in those kidneys. I could flush four or five of those syringes into them with nary any visible change. However, it became apparent to the touch that something is accumulating inside.


There are still more to work with.


Each of the kidneys has a different personality, which you learn to appreciate after groping them for the better part of a day.


One of them even conveniently sports some kind of lesion, maybe even a tumor. Which is great for us.
Although not visible on these pictures, they are by now filled to the brim with contrast agent (a suspension of titanium oxide in slightly gelly agar-agar). This is very white, pretty fluid while still in liquid phase, and very prone to find its way out of a pressurized environment, which I learned the hard way. When injecting it into one of the kidneys, the tubing became loose and the pressurized syringe-kidney system exploded in the lab, sending white goo everywhere up the walls and over the table.


This is kind of midway for the kidney phantoms: the CT room at JHMI. They are scanned here so we have something to compare with the later ultrasound images. This comes in a later installment.

Stroll in Mt. Washington

Today in the afternoon I strolled around Mt. Washington. The weather was pleasant, I couldn't concentrate on work, so I took my camera (yes, let's mention it again: the R1) and went downhill.

This might look like a Frank Lloyd Wright, but isn't. It's just a corner shop.


The parking lot of the United States Postal Service location in Mt. Washington. These vehicles are small and need to be evacuated from the flood danger area onto the bridge right next to it whenever it rains.


This might look like a cathedral of the modern times. But in reality it is the afore-mentioned bridge.


I wonder if they ("aber wer sind denn die?") had to pay royalties for this clever slogan. God giveth, Man taketh.


Man really taketh. This is in one of the posh upscale Mt. Washington interior design stores, selling antiques. Each of those undefinable pieces of ancient machinery (those on the small table, not the R1) cost between one and three thousand dollars.


Here, PJS taketh a picture.


Oh, and one unrelated quote at the end. It is not only unrelated, but even a lame re-post from long ago, but I feel like repeating it again:

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. If you're an idiot, you fall behind soon and never catch up.

(courtesy of Techno)

Trivia

So the other day I was, like, trying not to forget programming, and dabbled with some hardware.

"Well, yesterday I've been working on this very simple demonstration prototype, really simple stuff, and I hope to have it ready by tomorrow."
"... Wow, that is nice. We should publish this!"
"No, come on. This is really trivial stuff, and it's not finished yet. It might be publishable if I had the theory behind it that I am still looking for."
"Ok, then it need not be a journal paper. Let's make it a conference contribution!"

Random Impressions, More of them

Just some random images from Baltimore.


San Martin Drive Parking Lot.


Short autumn, near Homewood campus.


Baltimore Museum of Art. Entry is free; the collection really is on an international level.


My room.