Devil's BSD

Michelle and Justin’s Wedding

Roger — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:41:19 +0000

This Memorial Day weekend I was in New York for my sister Michelle’s wedding. Even though I was totally outgunned by the professional photographer team there, I still got some really nice shots! This was also Kristy’s first time on a plane and her first time in New York, so I have plenty of photos from our short time zipping around New York. I’ll put those up later, though.

Gallery after the break!

Tik Tok Medical Mix

Roger — Sat, 08 May 2010 09:00:11 +0000

For the 2010 UK College of Medicine Lampoons, I helped create this parody of Ke$ha’s Tik Tok, adapted for the med student life here. For the uninitiated, Lampoons is an annual tradition where we medical students get to poke a bit of fun at our professors, and for the most part, they enjoy helping us poke fun at them too!

We did the entire thing in under a week, with all of the editing done within 36 hours of the lampoon last night. Apparently the fourth years had done theirs over the course of an entire year, though, and had made a fairly good sized movie out of it. It made our four minute sketch look kind of… well, puny. At least I’ll have a goal to top next year!

And without further ado… the video!

The Abyss

Roger — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:51:27 +0000

We’re covering memory and plasticity today in Neuro, and I was reminded of this article by Oliver Sacks about a man named Clive Wearing. This is a really fascinating article from the New Yorker. Clive Wearing’s case is particularly interesting because he had developed both retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and he frequently “re-awakens” to his own existence. Yet, through all of his amnesia, he still is able to conduct a choir and play the piano and remember his love for his wife.

A Neurologist’s Notebook: The Abyss: The New Yorker

Spring Break Shoot!

Roger — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 05:17:31 +0000

Over my spring break last month, I did a shoot with Marissa and Kayla in Louisville! It was really fun to be able to take a break from the unending studying that comes with being a med student. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold outside, and it was kind of gray and dreary to boot. But we got some really fantastic photos out of it!

This is really my first shoot where I started out with a professional workflow in mind. I was shooting in RAW, did proofing in Adobe Bridge and post-processing in Photoshop. Out of about 200 photos, I managed to get about 20 good ones! This was also my first shoot with the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G DX prime lens, and I am really happy with it! Check out the photos for yourself after the jump!

WNR834B Antenna Mod

Roger — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:34:16 +0000

I picked up a Netgear WNR834B two months ago, and it’s been doing pretty well replacing my Linksys WRT54G v4. It runs DD-WRT and I have it set up to broadcast two wireless networks: my secure network with WPA2-AES, and a less secure, isolated network with WEP encryption that lets my mobile/embedded devices that may not be able to handle the AES encryption (Palm TX, Zune, HTC Excalibur, Nintendo DSi) onto the internet.

The signal wasn’t that fantastic at the other end of my apartment, though. Lots of people on the DD-WRT forums were getting a lot better results with modding the antennas on the router, so I did too. After finding compatible antennas on eBay, all I had to do was open up the router, enlarge the holes in the grate at the top to fit an RP-SMA connector through (easy task with the Dremel), plug in the pigtails to the board, and screw on the new antennas.

And there’s the results of the mod! The router is sitting in front of the cable modem, and both are on top of my TV computer.

This second photo is a comparison of the antennas. On the right, the dinky little internal antenna, and on the left the giant 11″ 7dBi antenna I added on.

I tested the new configuration and there was a drastic improvement, even at a close range of 1 m. I tested with my Thinkpad X200 Tablet (my only 802.11n device) on a WPA2 AES secured network, and here are the results:

Pretty slick! The router cost $20 refurbished, and the antennas cost $20 for 4 (I do have one extra if anyone wants it). So for $40 I have a router that performs fast enough to transmit 1080p video from a SiliconDust HDHomeRun with plenty of head room! I think my next upgrade is going to be a dual band (2.4GHz + 5GHz) 802.11n router. I can easily get 7-8 MB/s (56-64 Mb/s) on the wireless network at UK, so it might be worth the plunge in the future.

Dell U2410

Roger — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:03:34 +0000

I finally decided to replace my aging Samsung 205BW. Given my growing interest in photography and video editing since I purchased the 205BW almost five years ago, I decided to get a professional monitor, one with an IPS panel and 1920×1200 resolution. The two big contenders for me were the HP ZR24w and the Dell U2410.

Over on [H]ard|Forum a lot of the people who picked up the U2410 had tinting issues and/or did not like the aggressive anti-glare coating on the monitor. But looking at the wide gamut (The Dell has 100% Adobe RGB coverage and 100% sRGB as well, while the ZR24W only has 100% sRGB coverage) and the assorted inputs, I felt like I should take my chances once the price dropped to $450.

It arrived the Monday after I ordered it, and I was really impressed! The colors are impressive, with excellent color reproduction in both the sRGB and Adobe RGB colorspaces. I really enjoy the flexibility I now have, not only with color, but also with inputs. I can finally hook up my Wii again! This thing has 2 DVI inputs, 1 VGA input, 1 composite video input, 1 YPrPb component input, and HDMI and DisplayPort inputs. It also sports 4 USB ports and an SD card reader. It’s really a dream to work on. And Planet Earth and Life never looked so good at 1080p! As for the anti-glare coating, I am used to the aggressive anti-glare coating on my Thinkpad X200 Tablet, so it was not a very big deal.

Photos and more after the jump!

First image is the new U2410 with a Windows 7 background. Second image is the 205BW with the same exposure settings. Notice how much dimmer it is! Third image is the U2410 on a white background. The image is kind of misleading, though – it really doesn’t look that tinted.

The only problem was that there was a stuck green and blue subpixel, and a lazy red subpixel that would sometimes get stuck. Fortunately, the U2410 comes with Dell’s premium panel guarantee with advance replacement! Dell shipped out a replacement panel immediately. Unfortunately, the second panel wouldn’t go into power save mode and had a very noticeable blue tint on the right side. So I called them up again, and they were really helpful again! After I’d shipped the first unit with the dead pixels back, they sent me a third U2410. So far, it looks like the third one’s the charm. So far no dead pixels have developed during burn-in, and there is no visible tinting! Way to go, Dell!

A few more pros about the monitor: It comes factory calibrated for ARGB and sRGB colorspaces, and it has capacitive touch menu buttons that light up when your finger gets close. Yeah, it’s a little gimmick, but it’s a really cool one. And, it’s the little things that count.

Hopefully I’ll be doing another shoot with Marissa in the next month or so, after my Neuroanatomy block is over. I’ll see then how much of a difference this monitor makes in my postprocessing workflow then!

New Site

Roger — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:21:02 +0000

Hi, welcome to the fourth incarnation of devilsbsd.net. Since I’m in med school now and don’t really have time to muck around with Dreamweaver templates and all that anymore, I’m just going to resort to using WordPress as my CMS. I’ll be using this space as my main “professional” internet presence now, so I’ll put stuff up about photography or music or medicine up here.

I’ll be putting some non-filler content up real soon! Can’t wait to get this thing started again!