Rubricks - Ruby on Rails CMS

Rubricks is a open source CMS being built on top of Ruby on Rails. It looks elegant, neat and fast. There are some features that need to be added, and i am not sure about the admin part as I just looked at the demo on

http://en.rubricks.org/

It has a wysywig editor ( which is a good start ), news, bbs, RSS reader and a search engine.

It looks much better than the Radiant CMS which is the one getting the publicity on the R on R sites.

The project is very new with the first version out this April. Thus it is keeping a good pace in development. Greater community involvement may make this the number one R on R CMS.

On-line publications in urology

There are many on-line magazines now and there are online versions of paper based magazines. However, it seems that the online publishing phenomenon is not as well established as the paper version.

The International Brazilian Journal of Urology is one of the journals in my field that has really taken the way forward. It is an excellent journal; it is an online journal and access is completely free. It is accessed frequently, quoted profusely and many in the field from far and wide send articles to it.

The pioneering journal in Urology, no doubt....

VUR

The treatment of VUR is now mostly conservative. However in Grade 3 sometimes and 4 and 5 most of the time, surgery is needed. To prevent surgery the use of bulking agents were used. But these were toxic, tended to migrate or disappear altogether.

DEFLUX is made of two types of sugar-based molecules (polysaccharides) called dextranomer and hyaluronic acid. Both substances are well-known from previous uses in medicine. Both materials are also biocompatible, which means that they do not cause significant reactions within the body. In fact, hyaluronic acid is produced and found naturally within the body.

Therefore if this has some long-standing support, stays in and prevents VUR that is, it could be a useful adjunct in the therapeutic armamentorium..

The cost is the other factor to be considered, of course.

G-Web hosting

Google is getting serious about this hosting business. Google web creator is ready. It looks great. Blogs, mail, calendars, wordprocessors and spreadsheets and now web site, all in one place.

Google has planned things well. To open a new account one has to give ones mobile phone number. Very clever, again. This makes so many connections to an individual from various areas of his communicating methods with the outside world.

To Google means to grow and grow and grow, over and into, everything.

Is this Ggood or is it Gbad?

So far so good.

Thank God I don't have any Top Secrets to protect!

ART

Assistive Reproductive Technology.

An ethical time bomb. What weird things can happen to humanity is only imaginable. It will hit us when we realise it. What about the future of the resulting offspring?

Nothing in the history of the human race has ever shaken our very basis of birth, death, love, sex and family. Our spirituality, religosity and whatever else.

Wow!

When does life begin? at fertilization? zygote stage? embryo when the heart starts to beat? When is a mind established? When does the soul enter?

The study of life - human beginnings, what is it called? The study of death is Thanatology........

Inaugural Annual Sessions of the SLAUS

The Sri Lanka Association of Urological Surgeons had their inauguration today. It started with a laparoscopy workshop with Dr Sanjay Kulkani and Mallikarjuna from India demonstrating some ops. Simple nephrectomy via the intraperitoneal approach, pyeloplastty via the same approach, retroperitoneal approach to ureterolithotomy and a partial neprectomy for nephron-sparing renal tumour surgery were demonstrated.Dr Narmadas Gupta and Dr Rainy Umbas (Indonesia) were also present, being the President-elect and President of the Urological Association of Asia.

Dr Lalith M Perera, our Presidnet made the keynote address. There was a nice cultural show as well. Dr G N Perera the first Sri Lankan Urologist was also present.

udf support in new linux kernel 2.6.19

The new kernel promises udf file system support for read/write DVD+RW media. CR-RW with help with pktcdvd device.

UDF file systems allow us to use a CDRW or DVD+RW media like floppies. Drag and drop to copy and over-write.

Will desktops make use of this?

Ubuntu grows and grows....

The Ubuntu linux distribution has become the most downloaded, most used and most liked linux distributuion of all.

With the first relaease in October 2004, it has gone to the top of distrowatch and remained there.

It is certainly the friendliest linux distro around. It is also the best distro to run on notebooks. The Thinkpads are specialy supported, as the team in Canonical UK, mostly use them.

The brown, clean, Gnome desktop and its simple toolbars, the ability to add/remove a vast number of programs, ease of use, good hardware detection, ease of installation from the desktop of a live CD, are adding together.

The futuristic Beryl desktop 3D enhancements, look great already.

Meanwhile the new Ubuntu server offes a LTSP-5(Linux Terminal Server Project). LTSP-5 is designed to offer thin clients a lower TCO (total cost of ownership), simpler installation, and easier maintenance than typical office desktop deployments.

open source GPL 2 java by sun

open source community will be thrilled to find the java language being made available with FOSS label.

http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/index.jsp

This is thought to be one major step in making open source platforms stronger and more useful. It will allow open source developers to get involved in java development without worrying about legal issues.

The spread of java to more and more devices and platforms is likely.

Concept Maps and Mind Maps

Concept Mapping is an extremely useful tool as I found out. There are several free tools which provide some cool functions. Most of them use java, while one uses Trolltechs language Qt, and is called View Your Mind.

I personally find Concept Maps more useful than Mind Maps. CMap Tools and Compendium are my favorites at the moment.

They are also, a very nice presentation tool.......

Free and Libre

GNU/Linux and open source software is being promoted quite actively in our country as well as around the world. There have been many instances where the word free has become confusing to those getting to know FOSS. Free software is something you do not pay for, it does not ensure that the source code is also made available. You cannot change it either. Such software exists. Open source software is when the source code -the way the program has been written - is made available. This does not mean the software has to be free of charge or that you can share it with your neighbour or friend.

Free and Libre are used to signify freedom to the user, the community, the country and perhaps the world. The problem is that advocacy may fail to stress this very important area, and miss the whole point of the concept to newcomers. The term OST (Open Source Technologies) is now widely used and is of concern as the F is out of it. It should be FOST (Free Open Source Technologies).

People like Richard Stallman did not create FOSS just to allow cheaper software or free of charge software. They did not just want source code made available. They wanted to produce something which would belong to everyone; to build, share, improve, join, distribute, copy, criticise and yet safeguard, with the freedom that all deserve to have. This will not only ensure equality, reduce the digital divide but will allow for people to work together and share together, without worry about legal issues, like patents and copyrights. Making money out of it is part of the freedom!

If people do not undertand this freedom, then the whole purpose of advocating FLOSS fails. If it is a trade off between prorietary and cheap or free of cost software or just open source software, it is just a matter of money and how curious and IT literate you are. You will realise the restrictions of these only when you want to share, improvise and work together, and find it restricted. This is not your software. It belongs to others. They make the rules.

As always, preserving freedom is a life-long battle. The way not to lose, as always, is by education, knowledge and wisdom within the growing community of software users.

In a world growing with ICT, as the levels of ICT literacy rise, the freedom of FLOSS will make its own statement.

VistA

VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) is the most comprehensive Medical Software System in the world. It is quite massive, and this itself is the problem. It is quite a task to deploy and it is not user friendly at all. It uses M or MUMPS programming language, not something that is heard of in modern times. To find a programmer for this language will be quite a task, and as a result that person will be very expensive to work with!

However if the government is trying to deploy a country-wide system, this is the best bet. In that case, they could hire programmers for the inital setting up. On the other hand, it is so comprehensive that it could be just used as it is without the need of a programmer.

The development of a FOSS derivative through WorldVista, using GT.M a modernized version of M that is used widely in many organizations particularly in the US, combined with OpenVistA has promoted an interest in it around the world. The GUI front-end to it is windows based, and to run it in linux, Wine was used with some success. But some functions do not work and others do not work very well. To solve this problem, CodeWeavers have come forward to port the CPRS (Computerized Patient Record System) component of VistA, a free electronic health records software application developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, for use on Linux.

"CodeWeavers' version of the VistA CPRS (Computerized Patient Record System) graphical user interface will be promoted by WorldVistA to non-profits as well as healthcare providers in developing nations around the world. The goal of the two organizations is to increase the viability of implementing VistA, thereby giving providers the same capabilities in records management enjoyed by their better-funded counterparts in the industrialized West."
http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/2006022013533346

However there is far to go, as some of the applications working on VistA are not free. However once Open Sourced, things can grow pretty fast as we all know!

Learning VistA maybe worthwhile. The governnments of most developing countries will benefit greatly by going with this and more than that, M via GT.M, will ride again!

Anyone for M Programming?

Tiddlywiki

In a previous post I was thinking about a way of keeping a jotter to write down ideas. While this is not as spontaneous as a dictaphone or notebook, this tool is one of the best bits of software that I have seen. Jeremy Ruston, thank you!

I have two folders, each with a wiki, and some pictures. Keeping notes was never as fun as this way. One is all about HIT stuff and the other on my other job.

The variety of the offshoots (adaptations) of TwiddlyWIkis is another revelation (one runs in Zope called Ziddlywiki!). Whatever your job, you have a customised Twiddlywiki to write your twiddlers and read them! The nicer way to do this is to use plugins after starting from the basic tiddlywiki - a file called called empty.html about 145K. There are hundreds of Macros that can be added to automate many differernt tasks. These are easy to add too. You can make your own :-)

RSS feeds can be added easily.

Did I mention it is free to download and use? It is open source!

For the latest news about TiddlyWiki, see:

* Osmosoft, Jeremy's blog TiddlyWiki
* TiddlyForge, an independent news site from DevonJones
* TiddlyWiki discussion forum and developer discussion forum

Everyone needs one........

FOSS in HIT to the world

OSHCA is an important organization, but has only a small international presence. It needs to grow and become incorporated as an official enterprise type organization. This will give it a stature in the international government/business/IT/health sectors, that will allow the furthering of initiatives to FOSS based HIT. The organization should be able to handle funds, organise conferences, collaboration, set open standards, motivate people and governments and educate them. IT could also forewarn them about legislature that can harm the development of FOSS.

To promote FOSS in HIT a strong organization such as this is needed. Organizations like IOSN could also play an important role here. Instead of creating several organizations under many banners, it is best to form one large umbrella under which the others can work. To do this communication between these international groups are a must.

We need a go-between......

Rescued by a puppy

My hard disk, after surving me well beyond the guarantee period, coughed and collapsed. Since I had saved most of what I had there, it was not a problem. I was however, able to use my PC with a live CD of linux. But what about my bookmarks, files etc?

I thought this was as good a time as any to get that little puppy from down under, to help. Booting with the puppy multisession CD 1.0.6 in the CD writer, I simple copied everything I wanted from my USB pen and a CD, setup the connection to the internet, played around a bit, and logged off. I was asked if I wanted to save stuff, I said "yes" and logged off.

When I booted up again, everything was there including my beloved bookmarks, files and pics. This is so good, that I wondered if I ever would need a HDD! But there are some problems. Sound does not work. Not a big problem, but sad. The MPEGs cannot be seen. Multimedia is missing!!

All these are correctible according to the Forum. If I want to I can install by pup-get the Open Office 2.0 suite too, and log off and burn it to my Puppy. But I have held it at bay for now, as it gives me a chance to try out my Taprobane live CD to use Office apps.

Nevertheless, Puppy is quite wonderful. I must get multimedia going and add OOo and then it would be quite adequate for most days.

I do miss my Ubuntu install though :-) It was growing quite well......