Remembering March, 2008
Large Hadron Collider | 30th Mar 2008
Will the Large Hadron Collider bring about a cosmic Doomsday event, be used to shoot pidgeons, or just create the Higgs Boson and discover the meaning of life? Only the next few months will tell… Note to dyslexics: Don’t transpose the “d” and “r” in that second word, or you’ll get an entirely different set [...]
Upgrades | 29th Mar 2008
Lots of upgrades for me over the past 24 hours. The most relevant one is that WordPress 2.5 was officially released today, so my blog is now running on 2.5. What does this mean? Well not a whole lot for you readers unfortunately, given that the big changes occurred on the back-end (where I write [...]
Comparing OOXML and ODF | 27th Mar 2008
Rob Weir made a simple comparison between Microsoft’s OOXML and the current ISO standard ODF [via Truth Happens]. Both of these are file formats used when saving documents from office suite applications (e.g. MS Office 2007 saves in .docx format, OO.o Writer saves in .odt format). The purpose of having an open standard format is [...]
Portable Electronic Medical Records | 27th Mar 2008
I have been meaning to do a long post on EMRs for a while. After reading a recent post on Ars Technica on this issue, I decided this is as good of a time as any. Although Mr. Gitlin readily admits that EMRs are unlikely to solve the problems of “inefficiency” in the medical community [...]
Vanity | 26th Mar 2008
I should be a plastic surgeon because I just gave my website a wicked face lift. This is a design I’ve been working on for quite a while now. I started it last spring/summer when I was thinking about making a blog. By the time I actually got the site up and running, school had [...]
Browser Shots | 25th Mar 2008
Browser Shots is a great website to test the cross-browser compatibility of your web designs. Simply enter your URL and see what your website will look like on over 60 web browsers (on 4 operating systems). This is an invaluable tool for web designers. I just submitted my new design.
Futile care | 19th Mar 2008
PandaBear made a good point about the incentives for terminating futile medical care: My third point is that there is no incentive at any level of the medical industry to use a little common sense. At the high end, physicians risk severe legal consequences for not doing exactly what the family wants no matter how [...]
Blocking Tumor Growth | 16th Mar 2008
Researchers at HMS have discovered an important mechanism by which cancer cells can grow so quickly (via /.). They’re hoping to use this information clinically to significantly reduce the growth rate of cancer cells, making them much easier to manage. Cool.
What’s this Linux thing? | 16th Mar 2008
What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It?. A pretty good description. Another real reason is because it’s fun and productive.
Hulu now open | 12th Mar 2008
Hulu, a site by NBC, opened today (via LifeHacker). You can view full-length episodes from some of your favorite TV shows and also some full-length movies. Currently, the TV shows seem to just be a conglomeration of whatever was available on the individual shows’ websites. I’m hoping this service continues to grow and expand to [...]
I'm Jonathan Blackhall, a 4th year medical student at RMC. This is my blog, where I ramble about technology, medicine, free software, and other random stuff. 
