I arrived back yesterday from the SPIE medical imaging conference in San Diego. America, or the little bit that I saw, is weird. The people eat too much, too oily and too sweet, the cars that they drive are too big, they have too many of them and the petrol is too cheap. Most of this is really not their own fault. For example, their public transport system really does not encourage a more reasonable attitude towards cars.
On a whim we decided to drive down to Antwerpen on Saturday. This is one of the most beautiful and pleasant cities I have had the privilege of spending time in. In spite of its size and age, the city has a very vibrant atmosphere and the night-life is deeeevine.
I’ve always been a fan of python. So much so that I’ve embedded it in large C++ applications of mine to enable weird and wonderful extensions. However, I’ve always thought of it as just as scripting language, albeit a very flexible and clean one. These past few days I’ve been spending some time with more serious Python and Tix (Tk megawidgets) applications programming and I must say, I am really impressed. On modern hardware the advantages of creating applications this way far outstrip the disadvantages…
Rudolph has arrived!
I’ve been as sick as a dog these past few days. Your standard MoFo winter cold, but then with a baseball-bat and sneakers. It seems to have subsided quite quickly, probably partly due to the megadoses of vitamins I have been taking and the 10 hours of sleep every night. I actually did not have time for this, as I’m attending a mathematical morphology course by the likes of Rein van den Boomgaard, Lucas van Vliet, Henk Heijmans and Pierre Soille. If you know anything about morphology, you’ll know that these boys represent a serious chunk of research and innovation in the field.
I rediscovered a very old favourite in one of the SF short-story collections that I had bought at a local second-hand bookshop. Find and read “Specialist” by Robert Sheckley. Published in 1953, this story will remain timeless.