Bill Koslosky, MD

I had forgotten about the telethon last evening until I received an SMS from my sister Jane. I was all caught up in reading a review copy of textbook on medical statistics.

My smart phone is my personal portal to the info-aether, even more so than my laptop, which when connected to the Web is pushing too much noise, and filtering becomes a major task.

For me, one of last night's highlights was Sting doing an upbeat, energetic version of the his former cop band's song Driven to Tears. The rest of the show was very solemn and sedate. This wasn't as bad as watching celebs show how serious they can be. After seeing Dave Matthews and Neil Young do their song, I was thinking what if Jimmy Fallon showed up and did his "Pants on the Ground" (YouTube video) send-up of Neil? It would have broken the mood for a moment, and I think this is what this show needed. Afterall, we've just had to endure a week of two TV comedians behaving badly by taking themselves very seriously. Wah, wah, I'm a victim of big media.

Wyclef Jean ended the song with what I thought was a best tribute to the enduring spirit of the Haitian people and Caribbean culture. It reminded me of the tent shows during Carnival, during which time the calypsonians are given free reign to be outrageous, even satirizing the local politicians. A little bit of Carnival is the relief that's needed now, along with the bandages and bottled water.

This is a set of grey, white and black cards that are the least expensive option for pre-setting white balance for your digital camera.

The background is a grey foamcore board, and as you can see it's pretty close to the grey card in color. After doing some testing, I found that if I use the spot meter on the grey card, by increasing exposure by 1 stop, I got a pretty good histogram. Used in this way, the card acts as an incident light meter.

The color of the black card is uneven, and the white card seems to have a blue cast. When I did the PP in Nikon Capture NX2, I used the grey card to set the grey point, the black card to set the black point, but needed to use the border of the playing card to set the white and still see detail in the highlights.

 Overall, I'd have to say that the grey card is more convenient and durable than hauling around a piece of foamcore, but not by much. I wouldn't find much use for the black or white cards.



This is just an excuse to practice using SqSpace for posting images.

From Healthcare IT News:

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology is set to launch its 2011 certification program, designed to help hospitals and physician practices show the meaningful use of IT that is required to qualify for federal incentives.