(Badly) inspired by some dude’s weekly I’m-finishing-my-PhD-blog, sent to me by the infamous francoism, I have decided that you, dear reader(s) (hey mom!), have the right to be exposed more regularly to the voices in my head.  So, in order to supplement my recent posting frequency of once per month (my global frequency seems to be higher: 349 posts over 98 months in total), I’m going to post every single week with an exceptionally entertaining summary of the week’s highlights.  I do reserve the right to slip up now and then, or to stop completely when I feel like it. :)  You then have the right to taunt me in the comments of this, or the latest post at that time.

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You can always check my Latest VTK Windows binaries page to make sure you have the latest blog posting and hence the latest binaries.  It also links to the “old” Python 2.5 VTK 5.4.1 binaries.

I’ve made available my home-baked VTK 5.4.2 Windows binaries.  These have the new-and-improved version of my python-exception-patches integrated (more about this in a future post; a serious dead-lock has been fixed and as a side-effect, you can now run multiple VTK pipelines in different threads!) and have been built with Visual Studio 2008 (9.0) SP1 on Windows XP SP3 with full Python 2.6 support.  Get the binaries (or my patched source) from the two links below.  You want the binaries if you want to use VTK from Python.

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Courtesy of an invitation by Prof. Bernhard Preim and the CARS (Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery) organization to give the Visualization and Virtual Reality in Medicine tutorial together with the good professor, I got to go to CARS 2009 in (you guessed it) Berlin.  It was an honour and a pleasure to present this tutorial together with the author of The Book currently defining my research field.

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On Friday I returned, by jet-powered flying device, from Yet Another Visit To Berlin.  :)  Berlin still exudes cool like nothing else, and I got to spend my time there in the company of more than 190 other Visualisation people, many of whom have become friends over the past years.  The three days were filled with presentations, but more importantly (sorry presenters!) good conversations, new friends (contacts?) and not too much sleep.  This was, without a doubt, my best Eurovis conference so far!

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You can always check my Latest VTK Windows binaries page to make sure you have the latest blog posting and hence the latest binaries.

I’ve made available my home-baked VTK 5.4 (actually build from a CVS VTK-5-4-1 tag checkout) Windows binaries.  These have the new-and-improved version of my python-exception-patches integrated (more about this in a future post; a serious dead-lock has been fixed and as a side-effect, you can now run multiple VTK pipelines in different threads!) and have been built with Visual Studio 2005 (8.0) SP1 on Windows XP2 with full Python 2.5 support.  Get the binaries (or my patched source) by going here.  You want the binaries if you want to use VTK from Python.

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I was mistakenly under the impression that, at least in my social circles, the whole vaccination issue had been put completely to rest, but based on the number of serious questions that I’ve been asked recently, this unfortunately does not seem to be the case.

For those of you who don’t have time, I’ll cut to the chase immediately:

Yes, you simply must vaccinate your children.  This is the best and safest choice, for both your child and your fellow humans.

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As mentioned in the previous episode of this Exciting and Inspiring series, I was on my way to Magdeburg (that’s in Germany) for a one-month micro-sabbatical. It seems that almost everyone has a different idea of what a sabbatical actually entails. Some seem to think that it’s a different kind of vacation, others think that it’s a strange kind of very long Sunday.

In an academic’s case, a sabbatical usually refers to a period of time spent away from the usual place of work to acquire some new skill, to perform some serious thinking or to try one’s hand at coming up with and performing some “own” research, whatever that may mean.  I have come here to do mostly the latter. Secondary but important perks include getting to know the people and the work of an allied research group better, in this case the the Lehrstuhl für Visualisierung in the Institut für Simulation und Graphik of the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg.  Tertiary perks include improving my non-existent Deutsch, but that’s not going terribly well, although I have learned how to say “Schönes Wochenende” pretty convincingly though!

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The past months have been hectic. Since the start of 2009 I have initiated, developed and run the brand new TU Delft Medical Visualisation M.Sc. course (cutting-edge learning methods with integrated lectures and hands-on exercises, more on this in a future post), released DeVIDE 9.1, worked on bunches of research proposals, co-authored articles and setup new research projects. This happened in parallel with my normal work duties.   The lecture/workshop part of the course is now done, proposals and articles were all submitted last week and newly setup projects are coming along nicely.  It’s a strange feeling sitting here on a Saturday morning not having to work towards some deadline:  I’d sort of gotten used to working 7-day weeks.

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I thought I had everything any human could ever desire.  Turns out I was completely wrong.  Please please please get me one of these for my birthday:

This will work especially well here in the canals of Delft.  I’ll be able to arrive at work or just go about town in ultimate style.  YEAH!

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DNS changes are  still propagating for various domains, but this post is definitely coming to you from my new home at WebFaction!

Over the past two days, I’ve migrated a number of domains that I host from anhosting to WebFaction.  At anhosting I had 30 G of disc, 750 G of bandwidth (seems they’ve gone all unlimited now) and great support for a few dollars a month (that’s about 10 eurocents :).  At WebFaction I get 20 G less disc space and 150 G less bandwidth for some dollars more per month!!  Great deal right?!

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