Girl’s heart regenerates thanks to artificial assist
A 15-year-old girl has become the first Canadian to have an artificial heart removed after her own heart healed itself.
Melissa Mills arrived at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital last year after a sudden illness made her critically ill and a candidate for a heart transplant.
Doctors at the hospital implanted the Berlin Heart, a portable mechanical device that keeps blood pumping in an ailing heart, so she could survive until a transplant became available.
But over the next few months, Melissa’s overall condition improved dramatically, and her heart muscle regained much of its strength. After 146 days on the Berlin Heart, Melissa underwent surgery to have the device removed.
“We thought the miracle was that the Berlin Heart would give us time to find the perfect donor heart for Melissa,” said her mother, Sharon Mills, in a release. “We are overwhelmed that instead, the Berlin Heart gave her own heart time to rest and repair itself.”
CDCNews
China Says Tibetans Need Permission To Reincarnate
Ah those kooky censoring Chinese.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.
…
Schrodinger’s LOLcat
Vista Strikes Again
So, the Flickr tool for uploading has been written on Vista, because I don’t want to dirty the XP game box. Hehe, yeah compiled on Vista means it doesn’t run on XP. The shell32 reference in the Interops is Vista’s and you get an Interface error on XP about missing items. If you use an Shell32 Interop you must compile a version of the app on the target OS. That sounds like a fun build farm to make for a 20 project.
Loving the Vista!
Video Yoga Mat
I’m not kidding. This idea is appalling to me and runs counter to the intention of practicing yoga. I would end up kicking the metal tube across the room at some point. It’s easy to see how the video tape exercise market would love it.
http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2007/08/17/yogis-are-now-hi-tech/
How to Make a Glowing Tomato
If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to attempt this project — how to make a tomato glow — and judge for yourself just how incredibly awesome a glowing (inedible) tomato really is… or you could cheat and watch the video after the jump.
http://www.diylife.com/2007/08/14/attack-of-the-glowing-tomatoes/
The Oracle of Starbucks
http://www.buttafly.com/starbucks/index.php
Astrology is lame and Myers-Briggs is for losers. The omniscient Oracle of Starbucks can tell you everything about your personality by what you drink at Starbucks. Simply enter your full drink order — including size — into the field below and the all-knowing Oracle will tell you everything about your personality. Better yet, input your friends’ orders to find out what they’re really like.
Unlike other imitations, the Oracle is 100% accurate.
Anthony Cracked the NTFS File Metadata Problem
Wahoo! Anthony cracked the problem of the NTFS file metadata. Using Shell32.dll and adding this reference to the project you can make a ShellClass and store all the file details in an ArrayList; name, attributes, datetimes, title, comments, etc. This took a lot of time to find. So, I’ll post the full results later tonight. It’s very easy to do, which is probably why there is not a .Net API to use.
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30292
Ooh, another Vista FUBAR
Oh, look more Vista bullshit. So, I installed a toolkit. It set the sample folders to readonly. Unfortunately, the samples are VS03 and VS05 pitches a fit and won’t open them until they are converted. Which is impossible on readonly folders. No, problem I right click on the folder and uncheck the readonly box. It says Admin permissions are need. Click Continue. I do. Nothing happens. The folders are still readonly. No problem. I’ll use attrib on a command line. No go. You need Admin permissions. So, I run the command line as Administrator. And try Attrib again. It’s as effective as using the UI. Freaking Vista. I noticed security often wastes more time and it saves. If you are sane you will not upgrade.
Flickr App to Upload Organized Files
Flickr Upload is great it lets you drop files on it and then uploads them to Flickr. It’s a pain if the files are already sorted and arranged, because all this is lost. All the files at all the levels go in one group.
I went looking for something that would treat each folder as a tag and the lowest folder would be the set. I couldn’t find something, but I did find enough info to make something to do this. Explorer Sync started today and it already scans through the folders and upload the files as I described above. It’s still very crude. Right now there is one button and everything is hard coded. I downloaded MS Visual Studio Express 2005, SP1, FlickrNet, and NUnit. Using this thin document I got the Flickr part working. And this article shows how to iterate the folders. The interface needs to let you pick a root folder and some tweaks to the uploading and tagging. At this level it solves my immediate problem, v.1. I want to keep from uploading files twice. Maybe, by storing the filepath in the comments on Flickr.
For extra credit, I want to let multiple people make comments or tag the photos on Flickr and carry this info back to the Windows file metadata. Then I can see what comments people make and move/update the photos accordingly. Oddly, there is not a .Net NTFS metadata API. You have to make an Interop to the old Win32 libraries. I found someone who did this with c#, but is is not working on my Vista.
Took about 5 hours so far. I would guess it’s about 33% done or less. The rest will probably take 15-20 more.
Recursively Iterate Through Folders Using c#
I have written recursive file and folder iteration in VBScript more times than I can count using the FileSystemObject. FSO Rules! This is the same code for .Net c#.
http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2004/06/23/162913.aspx
Trojans, Rootkits, and the Culture of Fear
This is more intended for a Windows developer audience. However, the virus detection numbers are priceless. Just skip through the technical parts.
You should never run Win2K or XP w/o admin level access like he is pushing for, because MS made that pretty much impossible. Vista’s is better, but far more annoying. A Mac is good if you don’t play games or fix other people’s computers.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000929.html
…
2. Traditional Anti-Virus Doesn’t Work Any More
The blacklist approach used by anti-virus vendors simply doesn’t scale to today’s threat environment. Blacklists are never particularly effective. But it’s getting to the point where the illusion of protection afforded by a traditional anti-virus solution is worse than no protection at all:
Let’s suppose somebody who is involved with incident response at a typical US public University collected a few recent malware samples from the compromised machines, and then submitted all the samples to VirusTotal for scanning against all current anti-virus and anti-virus-like products. What do you think the average detection rate is?
Let me give you the answer: it is 33%. In other words, the average detection rate of malware from these “solutions” was 33%, with the maximum at 50% and the minimum at 2%. Keep this number in mind, that shiny anti-virus product you just bought might be protecting you from just 2% of currently active and common malware (not some esoteric and custom uber-haxor stuff)!
I have to conclude what many security pundits were blabbing about for years: “mainstream” anti-virus is finally DEAD. It’s a weak excuse for defense-in-depth, in about the same sense as wearing an extra shirt provides “another security layer” in a gun fight.
Not only does anti-virus cripple your machine’s performance, it doesn’t even protect you adequately! Even if your anti-virus or anti-malware solution is catching an incredibly optimistic 90% of threats, all it takes is one new, undetected threat to get through and your machine is thoroughly 0wned.
…
Oral Family History Project Update
I recorded one of these already and have had limited success getting it out of WMA format. Not happy about proprietary formats. Grandma is coming up on Friday to stay with Jessica. We are going to the Angel Communication class Sat. And she is going to visit a cousin in Lubbock on Sat. I’m going to try to record another on Friday night.
Uploading 300 Photos to Flickr
I’m scanning old photos into the computer. Tons and tons of photos. This is not without problems. I have reams of photos to upload. One of the green photo books is almost scanned in. The biggest problem at this stage is organization. All the photos get name OldPhotoXXX.tif. Then I make a folder and drop them in. The folders look good on my computer, but Flickr is flat. Only the name matters. I can upload each folder, tagging the contents with the folder name. That would take forever. There are probably 60+ folders. For example, Kid Pictures contains one folder per kid or grandkid and then one folder for the brother/sister group shots. I picked the arrangement to make finding a particular person for the slide show very easy. It makes a lot of folders.
How am I going to get these up to Flickr? It’s worth paying for at this point.
Arghhh.. Flickr’s not a help. They want you to use their site exclusive. F that. My copy will carry the same info. Flickr will not live forever and I’m not spending months rescanning and renaming.
Ok, I got part of the problem solved. It took an hour and a half to write a Visual Basic script that renames the files to the folder name plus an increment. It’s extremely fast. About 2 seconds for 303 files in 76 folders. The script is here. It’s very small, 4kb. Now the problem is how to upload 76 folders. If each took 30 seconds it would take 38 minutes. So, probably an hour. Wouldn’t it be great to hit a button and it would tag and upload them for me. Maybe the Windows Home Server Flickr Plugin will do it for me. It’s sweet being able to write a script to do this. Many thousands of hours have gone into training this skill and I very seldom get to use it at home.
Ok, so I was checking out the very thin documentation on the .Net Flickr API. It looks very easy to upload.
But I had a great idea. I’ve been concerned about people marking up the unknown pictures with tags as they identify the people. How do I copy that back to the Windows file system master copy? And there is sometimes written info on the back of the photo that can’t go in Flickr, because I mass upload them. I think I can use this API to do it. This will sync the extra tag content on Flickr with Windows, notify me of recent changes and comments made to specific photos, and update the file location + name to match Flickr.
There has been another concern. I drop these photos in a new empty set of folders every time. So, that I don’t re-upload photos. This app can look check for file existence on Flickr before uploading. I can use one folder for scanning and not have to merge two sets of them. I’m wondering why Flickr Uploadr doesn’t do this already.
If I do this little app, when I’m done, the code will be available under Creative Commons or some other lic. Hopefully, others will find it useful. He he, I’m so aries.
What’s Inside: L’Oréal Self-Tanning Lotion
What’s Inside: L’Oréal Self-Tanning Lotion
WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.08