3MF

Curvus Pro returns as Grapher

I had a take-home Calc exam over break. The first question involved graphing. Rather than head to the school computer labs, i thought i would try to graph them at home. I went to download Curvus Pro, an app i had previously installed on my old box. It turns out that the program is no longer available for sale or download. I was bummed because i really liked that program. It turns out that the developer sold it off. After a little more digging, i found out it was actually purchased by Apple. It's been re-branded as Grapher and is installed by default with OS 10.4 (Tiger). It's located in the Applications\Utilities folder. Exactly why it is hidden in the Utilities folder i'm not sure. But there it was, on my computer the whole time.

It's basically the old program in a new brushed metal wrapper. It didn't seem quite as customizable as i remember the old one being; for example, i couldn't find a way to change the color or each of my equations plotted on the same plane. It was also difficult to set up all the axes because the fold down menu only lets you change one before closing forcing you to keep reopening it. I hope Apple continues to make improvements to this fine product.

In case you were wondering, the screen shot shows several level curves of the function z=x⁴-2x²-3y³+3y.

Sick of the holiday

I used to think there were just two kinds of sick. The kind that could be cured and the kind that couldn't. It seems now that this outlook was a bit naive. There's a whole messy spectrum in the middle.

Cancer is one of those diseases that defies conventional notions of illness. No other disease goes into remission. Remission is nothing more than when Sick tags Healthy with a big "you're it." Just as you can count on the Lions loosing on Thanksgiving day, you can count on Sick ultimately winning.

My father's cancer is back. My parents returned to Karmanos Institute to talk with oncologists about what to do next. The doctors my dad had the first time around weren't there any longer. They had moved one. The new doctor recommended another stem cell transplant, this time using marrow from a donor rather than using my dad's own cells as they did before. This procedure averages 3-6 months in the hospital versus the 21 days my dad was in the first time. The doctor wasn't all that friendly and spent as much time with my parents as the person who hands you your Frosty from the Wendy's drive-thru.

The catch is that my father's primary insurance provider has changed since last time around. Now his VA insurance will not cover another procedure. The transplant typically costs $400,000. If my parents decide to pursue that option, coming up with that kind of money would not be easy. We might be able to scrape it together but that would leave my mom with nothing. So how does one decide if its worth it? How much is it work to have him around for another Christmas? to have him walk my sister down the aisle? to keep him around long enough to for me or my sister to pop out a grandchild? This procedure, like the first, is at best only likely to put the cancer into remission for 1-3 more years.

Now i better understand what the people who throw those cancer fund raising events are going through. It's frustrating that the insurance companies can just turn their back like that. My dad most likely acquired the cancer while fighting for his country in Vietnam, and now the government thanks him by paying for pain medications rather than fighting the disease.

In the mean time, my dad is undergoing a new chemo drug. I took him to his appointment the day after Thanksgiving. We went into this long room that had 15-20 lay-z-boy type chairs all along the perimeter. Flanking each of the recliners was a cheep plastic chair and an IV pump. Windows covered two of the walls which allowed one to view the large snowflakes fall to the ground. A one end of the room a large television was showing Family Feud. There were only three other people in the room which is unusually slow for the office. The nurse asked if my dad had a seating preference and placed him in a recliner. The appetizer was a half a bag of fluids to get him hydrated. That took just over an hour. The end of the course was signaled by the beeping of the IV pump. Next came a dose of the anti-nausea meds which only took 15 minutes or so. After that, the nurse administered the main course. The type of chemo my dad got as in a simple syringe. The injection took no more than 15 seconds. The meal concluded with another 15 minutes of fluids.

This week my dad has been weaker than usual. He has fallen twice after his legs just gave out on him. The last fall was the day before Thanksgiving, and it left him with a black eye. He decided not to go to the Flickinger family celebration at my uncle's house; my mother stayed home with him. My sister and i still went to the large family gathering but it wasn't the same. We left early and returned to my parents house where my mom had cooked a meal just for the the immediate family.

Sunday is my dad's birthday. Instead of going out to eat, i've been asked to bring home some take out. Apparently my dad doesn't like going out to eat anymore. The mass in his chest (the one the doctors have acknowledged but aren't concerned about for some reason) can make it difficult to eat. He doesn't want to choke in public.

My cousin sent me a link to a journal kept by Dwight Ozard who also had Multiple Myeloma. He went though many of the same procedures as my father and we wrote about what he went though. Dwight finally passed away just this month. Since i don't post that much about cancer here, if you want to know more about the disease, that's a good place to look.

Picture shrinker

I'm responsible for posting the cast pictures to the Civic Theatre website. Typically a photographer goes to the theatre to take the pictures, they send them to me, and i resize the shots and post them with along with a brief bio. Normally that's not a lot of work; however, Wizard of Oz has a gigantic cast (half of which seems to be trees oddly enough). The part that had taken the longest in the past was the image sizing. I had Photoshop on my old box, and it ran really slowly. I wanted to see if i could find a more lightweight helper. A short google expedition dug up an app called ImageWell. It helped me resize, rename, and upload the pictures in no time. That made me happy.

What's that smell

My favorite Shooter quote of the day:

It smells like carbon monoxide in here.

Worst podcast ever

I have yet to find podcasts all that interesting. They seem to be useful only when you're killing time between actually doing stuff. Occasionally i'll read a blog post that references a podcast and i'll go check it out to keep up on what's going on.

Today i listened to a podcast that exemplifies everything that's wrong with the medium. Surprisingly, it's from Dave Winer, who is the "father" of podcasting. A third of the show is made up of fiddling around with his new PowerMac to get a MIDI file to play, another third is actually playing the stupid file, and the last third is whining in vague terms about Steve Gillmore to the point where you really have no idea what's he talking about or trying to say. It goes on pointlessly for 30 minutes. At one point he stops to make sure we can hear the fire trucks outside. Later he sings along to Turkey in the Straw. It's so awful.

Compare that to a podcast from Merlin Mann about how to leave a voice mail message. Clearly some thought was put into it before he hit the record button. Plus it was short so it didn't waste a chunk of your life. Most of the useful points probably could have been made in a regular text post, but he was able to add some humor that wouldn't have worked as well if you couldn't hear it.

I'm still not sure exactly where the medium is going but i hope it can steer away from the stereotypical rambling guy with a microphone. If i had a longer commute to work, perhaps i would find them more interesting.

Come see the ballet

I just wanted to let everyone know that Flickers is opening next week at the Grand Rapids Ballet Company. I'm running lights for the short run (Nov 17-20). I admit i haven't seen it yet, but the company has performed this piece in pervious years and it sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you check it out.

Update: Oh yeah, i just remembered that Actor's Theatre is opening Assassins this week. I want to see that too. How could a musical about predisential assassins not be interesting?

Extreme desk makeover

Before:

After: