luggers night

After a busy day, went to Bolgoda lake at 2100, to Suchetha's place for chat, sing-song and dinner. Met his parents and several other luggers, and had a really enjoyable evening to cap the day and put it to a close.

It is very nice to have such peaceful and quiet sorroundings to spend one's day through. It made me think that overcrowding maybe what is making people increasingly impatient and ill-tempered.

Someone should post some photos of the night on a Blog soon........

Gnome

I have just installed Ubuntu Linux. It has the GNOME desktop, which looks great! I like the colours too. Thanks to Ubuntu, now the number one in distrowatch, gnome will get a new lease of life. It has many technical and developmental advantages over KDE, in my opinion, and, I am not always right :-).

The Ubuntu install is not GUI, but is quick and interactive. After the initial start it does everything on its own. Oh! doesn't ask for a root password #@$.

Detected all the hardware with ease. Detected my USB pen drive and opened it on a folder! Sound works. It has a download manager and a neat app to take a snapshot of one's screen in system - take snapshot. The menus are well arranged and uncluttered. The colours/theme are also unusual and nice.

This is my favorite linux distro - to install.

My favorite live CD, is Puppy linux. Have puppy. Will travel.

Christmas ideas

I had this habit of jotting down the little ideas that suddenly pop up in one's head, when I was a student. I do not do that anymore, despite still having several ideas each day.

I was wandering if I should start this again? i have never met someone doing this, but know there are many who do. I used to jot hings down on bits of paper, which was a bad idea :-) Not recommended, as all those are lost. If I jotted it down in a small notebook, all would be still there for me even now, maybe.

I used my dictaphone too later, for a short period, but it is difficult to get the things in it into paper. Now we have digital dictaphones with software that will write it out for you on to the computer! A small handheld computer would nice too.

This is a good place to jot them down :-)

Favorites old and new

Starting with Redhat Linux 2.0 then to mandrake 7.0 and to Debian to Knoppix and Mepis. Then I picked up my little distro DSL. Now my favorites are Ubuntu to install (maybe until Taprobane comes with a good installer) and Puppy linux as the live distro. Puppy is truly amazing! I also found that Ubuntu server is excellent for LAMP/Zope stuff ( I haven't seen Taprobane 4!)

I am not sure if I will have to change to Kubuntu in case I don't like GNOME. However the fact that the MAIN Ubuntu distro is based on GNOME and the KDE version is just a - well - another variant distro, may make all the diference to GNOME's future.

However Mark Shutleworth is using Kubuntu on his desktop :-).

Since I am also more familiar with KDE, I may join him. Whatever happens......

Thanks Mr Shutleworth!

The stupidest species -us??

Human beings need a conscience. Without it we do the stupidest things. Despite being the most intelligent, knowledgeble species in the planet, we seems to be lacking in both wisdom and conscience for our deeds.

Having explored space and landed in a few planets, we are all excited with our own cleverness. We have failed to take the most important point of our findings - that we do not have another habitable planet anywhere. We have learnt to control our immediate little environment around us - the buildings, houses and clothing materials - and not realised that we are destroying the environment of our planet. Indeed, we are well on the way to destroying our own species, but thinking that if we die, the whole planet will be destroyed, somehow!

Homo sapiens is a new, young species and our worldly experience is incredible brief when compared to so many animals around us, not to mention the most important living thing on the planet - plants. These species have survived for such a long time and are evolutionary success stories par excellence.

The great religions of our world have taught us how to live wisely in this world, but we do not follow this advice. They tell us to "share", "give" and "let-go" and not to grasp in greed. They tell us to live and let live and to respect the environment.

When we want to kill others in our own species and we choose a weapon that will destroy everything, and the environment in that area we drop our bomb into becomes inhabitable for those who drop it; the conquerors conquer what?

We eat all the wrong foods, do not exercise, pollute the water we drink, food we eat and the air we breath so we get ill and to cap it all, our sperm counts are dropping all over the world. Our males are going sterile. The stupid young species may soon be no more!

When will our conscience stop us? When will wisdom come to our rescue? After destroying many species or both flora and fauna, if we are the endangered species now, will the other living things in our planet help us survive?

The rising tide

The tide rises insidiously, not suddenly and unexpectedly. Free open source software and GNU/Linux have been growing in stature, range, publicity, acceptence by non-geeks and the corporate world, in a somewhat similar way. It is 10 years since I got interested in linux, and when I look out there, the change is awesome!

When we see IBM, Sun Microsystems, Intel supporting this platform, and Nokia producing a new internet tablet based on it, it is apparent that GNU/Linux is now serious business. With mobile phones to ship with linux, and some computers selling with Linux pre-installed, embedded linux systems becoming well established, this is overwhelming evidence.

This is why, that, it becomes absolutely necessary, for developing countries in particular to adopt FOSS with a vengence. The advantages are clear, and to promote it to government is also easier. Indeed, it becomes suspicious, if those in the top IT hierarchy of a developing country, talks otherwise. The acceptence of FOSS and Prorietary on equal terms is a plus for FOSS, but not for the government. No government of a developing country can accept these on equal terms. They owe it to their citizens and for posterity, to take a stance for FOSS. They must take to a proprietary solution only if a FOSS solution is not available.

It is also necessary to remember that it is not only the cost that is important. FOSS gives the local software development platform a certain freedom and the government complete control of their data,
liberation from proprietary lock-in and security that is more assured.

Therefore, all deployment of proprietary software in government in a country such as ours, and the intentions of those who advocate them without reasonable explanation, must be questioned.

Even in the private sector, more knowledgeable share holders may well ask questions in the future when software costs are talked about in he sharholders meetings.

The tide is high.....

museums old and new

The excavations done in the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa in the recent years have resulted in some great new finds. The best place to see them is to visit the sites, but to understand them, walk into the museums.

The Jethavanaramaya museum in Anuradhapura is well worth a visit. I was facinated by the things found there. Elaborate marble carvings to those in stone, beautiful bead necklaces and also minute work in gold that would have needed working under a small microscope!

The coins that were found there were over 1600 years old, but still looks good.

But the most interesting piece there was something of special interest to me. More about this later.

..and to prevent, hopefully.

It is time to take preventing things more seriously. It seems to me that all of us are letting things happen to us which we could prevent or at least, put off - like the inevitable, that is. This is taken very seriously in the airline industry, for example.

The disasters that hit various parts of the world, showed how unprepared we are and how, we failed to prevent or minimise damage almost in all instances. Irrespective of what work you do and where, home or office, prevention is not getting enough of our attention.

Anything that has to be taught, is best started in school and the home. Thus it maybe worthwhile starting to teach and bring awareness to these things. This is environmentally friendly, cost-effective, political-savyy advice. So why the lack of effort?

When we consoider our own health, almost every common disease and/or it's complications, are preventable or minimisable. In a patient, any disease he presents with can be affected by other diseases/illnesses known and unknown within that person. This must be always considered regards the common diseases like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, prostate enlargement, osteoporosis and cataract related blindness. Thus it is best to look for these whatever else the patient actually presents with, particularly those over 40 years of age.

Be aware. Plan to prevent!

This should be the main thrust of 21st centuary education.....

Nature's architects

I was always facinated by the variety of things that are made by mother nature, and the efficiency of the architecture or structure. The feathers of birds, leaves of trees, birds nests, bees and termite nests are some examples. I used to think there were lessons for us there. I read a couple of years ago, for example, how the structure of the lotus leaf had inspired new types of synthetic materials, including glass, which may not need cleaning.



Therefore I was most interested in a program on BBC , which showed how some architects had made use of nature to study new ways to make more efficient structures and even eco-system like developments. This is indeed heartening to note. It is amazing how efficient, energy saving, pollution preventing, recycling and thus waste contriolling these are. And they are cost effective too.

The strange thing is as to why they are not part and parcel of city development all over the world.

see http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/bionic_buildings/gallery.shtml

See the remarkable secret of the lotus leaf

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00088C40-BE58-1E5F-A98A809EC5880105

FOSS week and Health

The FOSS week has been a great success and LKLUG has done itself proud!
I took little part in proceddings except to drop in at the conference and listen to an iteresting talk by the previous head of Debian -Martin Michlmyr. Very interesting talk. They have done quite well but there are still problems likt the installer not getting off. The lack of pubvlicity for the project in generqal ws also highlighted.

I spoke on LAMP in Hospitals just after MYSQL co-founder David Axmark.

Immediately after the talk some people spoke to me and some offered help. I do not know if anything will materialise, which is a great pity.

Downloaded ClearHealth. I will try to install and run it.

The GreenLight laser and Taprobane

Yesterday evening, I was at SLAUS meeting and Gordon Muir talked about Phallus and Viagra and Cialis. He also showed us a video of GreenLight Laser prostatectomy. Bloodless and just like a TURP, with a side working industry strength laser. The nice thing it it has little affinity to water and a lot to blood. This makes it particularly suitable for this operation. Stones are better dealt with by the Holmium laser.

The trouble wih the green laser is that it is expensive to use. The laser fibre is $1000 and disposable. Hopefully i can try this out soon at ASH, provided someone is ready to pay the extra amount....

I also got a copy of Taprobane Linux 0.3. It is available with bittorrent, but preferring human interaction I got it from the toon in IT times.

It has a great deal of self configration and detection going on at startup, but booted up without probs. Looks smooth with KDE and a nice selection of software, manageable menus. The Konsole is not visible though (gasp!), in the desktop icons or the panel at the bottom.....

I am looking at trying out an additional CD. i will get the debs and make some tar.gzs and see how it works. Apt-CD-ROM and apt-get most...

autostart when inserted and give some info to user.

What goes in?

Zope/Plone/OIO
OIO plug and play forms collection
Clear Health - may need pemission from them?
GNUMED
OpenHealth
OpenEMR
The Canadian Java based system - OSCAR?
Health Imaging using DICOM with conversion of formats
Documentation
Standards - including DICOM systems
Clasification Systems - coding systems
Drugref database
Minimal datasets in different fields including Histopathology?

That is huge!!
:-)

I need to ask them if they are agreeable to this, despite the FOSS freedom to take and make philosophy.....

Taprobane - medical companion

`What's the use of their having names the Gnat said, `if they won't answer to them?'

`No use to them,' said Alice; `but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?'

Taprobane is an old name for Lanka, but a new name for Linux. Started by a fellow lklugger AND another Alice lover ;-) with Bud the Baby tux with Brains, there is every possibility of it becoming something Sri Lankans can be quite proud of.

People may not anwswer to Taprobane Linux yet, but they will. AnuBud combination is pretty strong stuff, like mixing Arrack and Brandy.

I have also got involved to develop a companion CD that will have FOSS medical apps. Medical Software HAS to be under Open Source licence for moral reasons above anything else. Therefore the promotion of FOSS in HIT.

Back to sourceforge after a few years, with the same intention as when I joined to get OIO full steam ahead.

Hmm.

I am ready....

COSSL

The College of Surgeons Inauguration was held today at the Water's Edge. Nice place, with a mini golf course. The event was OK, food was good, and the oration was on Carotid Artery Endarterectomy. as a part of this research, the use of computers to identify the features of the inside of a plaque, it's accurate measurements, the analysis of Ultrasonic pictures of it in both colour and grey scale was discussed. This was interesting. Medical imaging is going to play an important role in the future, as it is now already showing us, with the incredible detail of anatomy that we can get with CT and MRI scans and then, what the software can do with them - like virtual endoscopy.

I missed the LKLUG meeting today though, and that was bad.

I am looking into the CDMEDIC PACS WEB that is all about medical imaging using DICOM standards and the creation of image databases based on FLOSS. Full featured free PACS based on ctn, dcmtk and mysql,with remote administration using apache mod perl and imaging processing capabilities using ImageMagick, Grevera's dcm2pgm DICOM converter and AFNI. There is a live CD that can be used to try the whole thing out. It is a large download but well worth it.

Picture Archiving and Communication System or PACS are computers or networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution and presentation of images. The term 'PACS' was first used by Dr
Andre Duerinckx (pronounced Dur-inks), MD, PhD, is now director of cardiac MR and CT and nuclear medicine at Forsyth Radiological Associates in Winston-Salem, NC.

The images from varuious sources are stored in a central database usually in an open file format - most commonly DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine). Steven C. Horii, MD, who is now a professor of radiology and clinical director of medical informatics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphi, is the man who was mainly, not solely, responsible for this standard. The filmless world has arrived!

I must plan setting up such a server and also try open source software for detailed analysis. AFNI (Analysis of Functional Neuro Imaging) is one such.

TINA is an open source environment developed to accelerate the process of image analysis research. It is usable in medical image analysis.

Now, there is a LiveCD of this too. It is going to be an important project as it is sponsored by the EU.

http://www.tina-vision.net/tina-knoppix/software.html

HIT and FLOSS

Health Information Technology (HIT) and Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) go hand in hand. In other words, finding FOSS to work with HIT is in itself a HIT!

HIT is going to be of real value to the Healthcare Industry as a whole, and this is an area where everyone must be inquisitive about.

WHY everyone?

Because everyone will have a health encounter if one lives long enough. This will mean that your health record will become digitalised in the future. Hopefully it will not be posted in a blog....

:-)

There are other areas of interest like research, audit and continuing education. This area is where HIT has an even more important, and les controversial role.

This blog will be mostly on this stuff, but you never know, because I have some friends who do influence me.....