These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 20 July 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling.
- 2008-07-20: I want what @codinghorror calls “a mobile device that replicates the desktop browser experience”, but without AT&T. I want an iPod Touch. [Long ago, I had ten cents a minute long distance service through AT&T. Except that they charged me about thirty cents a minute. They gave me the runaround when I attempted to get a refund. I have vowed never to be an AT&T customer again.]
- 2008-07-21: My latest audible.com audiobook is The Precipice, by Ben Bova. It’s entertaining and not as serious as what I’ve been reading lately.
- 2008-07-22: Today I learned how to use the Perl DBIx::Roles::Transaction module to manage database transactions.
- 2008-07-23: Last night I updated Vista on my MacBook Pro to SP1. My machine got so hot the fans were running full speed, but I’ve had no problems since. [I rarely use the Vista installation except for experimentation.]
- 2008-07-24: Twitter readjustment: My followers dropped from 33 to 22. Who was dropped? Twitter also says I’m following 59, but it shows avatars for 72.
- 2007-07-24: OK, that was a quick fix. 5 minutes after my last tweet, Twitter now says I have 32 followers and I’m following 72. Welcome back, everyone! [This was a Twitter problem that affected all users. See http://blog.twitter.com/2008/07/where-are-my-followers.html.]
- 2008-07-25: I had to miss both ISMB 2008 and OSCON 2008, which overlapped this year. They’re scheduled on different weeks in 2009, so maybe I’ll attend both. [ISMB 2009 will be held June 27 through July 2, 2009, in Stockholm. When I posted this tweet, I thought the dates for OSCON 2009 had been set, but now I can’t find a date on O’Reilly’s Conferences site.]
- 2008-07-25: At last, it’s Friday night. That means only two more working days this week. Weekends are when I get my real work done. [Eight weekend hours equal sixteen weekday hours in terms of productivity, because there are no distractions or interruptions.]
- 2008-07-26: @starstryder sends tweets, a “silly experiment”, in five, seven, five. [Dr. Pamela Gay, astronomer, college professor, blogger, and podcaster, has been tweeting haiku. Twitter haiku has been termed twaiku. Note that this tweet is also a twaiku.]
- 2008-07-26: Today I compiled and installed EMBOSS 6.0.1 for Mac OS X, then I installed mEMBOSS for Windows under Vista. http://emboss.sourceforge.net/ [I use some of the EMBOSS programs for my work.]
July 27 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
These are my lightly-edited tweets for the week of 13 July 2008. Follow my microblog at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling.
I spent the week in St. Louis with many colleagues for five days of training. The training was excellent, but I got absolutely no exercise, and I ate way too much food.
- 2007-07-13: I flew Boston to St. Louis via Chicago today, with 2.5-hour layover. I couldn’t get an IP address from the free public wi-fi at O’Hare airport. [The “official” wi-fi, with SSID “concourse”—heavily plugged over the public announcement system—cost $7. I decided it was not worth it.]
- 2008-07-14: I pigged out today on three large St. Louis-style meals. The O’Fallon Wheat on tap was delicious. Tomorrow I need to get some exercise. [St. Louis is home to many fine breweries besides Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser and other industrial beers. AB is being purchased by InBev, the European owner of Stella Artois and other brewers.]
- 2008-07-15: I will sleep safely tonight, because Senator John McCain and the Secret Service are staying at my St. Louis hotel tonight. [Senator McCain attended a fund-raiser where the price for dinner was up to $57,000 per couple. St. Louis County is home to an extraordinary number of wealthy Republicans (whereas the city is heavily Democratic). Afterwards, Senator McCain enjoyed a concrete at Ted Drewes; maybe he didn’t get enough to eat at dinner.]
- 2008-07-17: I continue to eat St. Louis-size portions at meals. I’m getting 300 extra calories a day, which is perfect for a pregnant woman, but not me. [Restaurant meals are larger than they should be, especially when you can’t take home the leftovers.]
- 2008-07-18: Last training day in St. Louis. Last night we had a delicious dinner outside at Atlas, a restaurant near Forest Park on Pershing. [When we lived in St. Louis, my wife and I owned a condo on Pershing, but Atlas hadn’t arrived in the neighborhood before we moved.]
- 2008-07-18: My first attempt at printing boarding passes on the hotel’s printer was blanks where the bar codes should be; had to install special driver. [The printing service at the hotel was a nice feature, but it wasn’t easy to use, and it makes me uneasy when I have to install special software.]
- 2008-07-19: Last night in St. Louis, I took two colleagues to dinner at Favazza’s and then to dessert at Ted Drewes. We happily ate too much. [Favazza’s is a favorite of my running friends in St. Louis, and Ted Drewes is a favorite of everyone.]
- 2008-07-19: ISMB 2008 has begun this weekend. I can’t go this year, but colleagues are going and will report.
July 20 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
These are my lightly-edited tweets for the week of 6 July 2008. Follow my microblog at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling.
- 2008-07-06: Food for thought: “The Nature of Self-Improving Artificial Intelligence,” presented by Stephen M. Omohundro.
- 2008-07-07: Yesterday I made a tax-deductible contribution to the Conversations Network at the Basic Member level.
- 2008-07-08: Implode-O-Meter, featured today in a New York Times article, has a hideously ugly 1995-style web site.
- 2008-07-09: Although I voted for Senator Clinton in the primary, I won’t give her any money to retire her campaign debt.
- 2008-07-10: The Library of America is issuing its second volume of Philip K. Dick novels on July 31. The first volume was terrific.
- 2008-07-11: In response to @easternblot’s post, “I get it: the entire exercise of writing a PhD thesis is to learn that you don’t know anything. I keep finding new things I didn’t know.”: @easternblot Writing a paper can have the same result as writing a thesis; you find out what you don’t know, then do additional experiments.
- 2008-07-12: In response to @codinghorror’s post “A day where I have to write PHP code: not quite as bad as a day where I have to write Perl code. But on the whole, still not good.”: I’m on the other end of the spectrum from @codinghorror on using Perl. I work quickly and cleanly with Perl, but C# gives me the horrors.
July 13 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 29 June 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling.
- 2008-06-29: My brother couldn’t find Vista or XP drivers for his old Canon digital camera, so I used my Mac OS X laptop to download his photos.
- 2008-06-30: My next audible.com book is The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. Unfortunately, after five hours, I don’t think the book is very good.
- 2008-06-30: Lots of hysteria, ill-founded rumors, and trolls about Pfizer cutbacks on the rumor mill at biofind.com this weekend — none of them true.
- 2008-07-01: I have many friends who work at Pfizer, so I wish them the best during uncertain times. I received Pfizer paychecks until we were spun off.
- 2008-07-01: On the fluidinfo blog today: “Minor mischief: create redirect loops from predictable short URLs.”
- 2008-07-02: A demonstration of Auto-Tune, the pitch-correction software used to fix recorded music, from the New Yorker: http://tinyurl.com/5m3vcr
- 2008-07-03: I had dinner last night with a good friend who is now working for BIOBASE at their Beverly, Mass. office.
- 2008-07-03: amazon.com emptied my shopping cart, which had 52 items saved for later. That’s not good business: I really was planning to buy that stuff.
- 2008-07-04: I have to work two of three days this long weekend. And I’m having so much “fun” that I forgot to read Slashdot for three days.
- 2008-07-04: I watched the fireworks in Boston this evening. They were truly spectacular, and the view is excellent from the MIT campus.
- 2008-07-05: I’m 9 hours into the audiobook of The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet, and no one has started building a cathedral yet — not good.
- 2008-07-05: This PHD Comics strip summarizes my life on three-day weekends, except it was more fun when I was in grad school.
July 06 2008 | Microblog | Comments Off
The 26 June 2008 issue of Nature is devoted to cosmic cataclysms, specifically the impacts of asteroids with planets and moons. The issue contains articles about the still-mysterious Tunguska blast, the South Pole–Aitken basin on the Moon, and research into near-Earth asteroids. These are followed by a photo gallery of meteor craters on Earth, Mars, Phobos, Ganymede, Callisto, Mimas, and the Moon.
The issue continues with a commentary about Spaceguard, a survey of near-Earth asteroids that concluded that the chance of one of these striking the Earth is extremely small. Despite this, the Los Angeles Times is running a story this week that declares that the United States is unprepared for an impact by an asteroid. This press release from the Planetary Society contains additional information. (I believe it would be a waste of money to pursue this further.)
Finally, the issue contains three papers proposing explanations for the martian hemispheric dichotomy, which is the fact that the northern lowlands, the Borealis Basin, are on average four kilometers lower than the southern highlands. Using different approaches, the three papers provide evidence that the hemispheric dichotomy was caused by the impact of a dense asteroid with a diameter 25% to 40% of the diameter of Mars. Since the basin that exists today has an elliptical shape, it is proposed that the blow was not a vertical strike.
The evidence provided by these three papers strengthens the hypothesis of an impact origin, but Walter S. Kiefer points out in a News & Views article that an alternative explanation is that the Borealis Basin was formed by convection of the mantle. It is likely that the issue will not be resolved until we can directly examine the composition of the rocks from different parts of Mars.
References:
Andrews-Hanna JC, Zuber MT, Banerdt WB. 2008. The Borealis basin and the origin of the martian crustal dichotomy. Nature 453:1212–1215. DOI: 10.1038/nature07011.
Marinova MM, Aharonson O, Asphaug E. 2008. Mega-impact formation of the Mars hemispheric dichotomy. Nature 453:1216-1219. DOI: 10.1038/nature07070.
Nimmo F, Hart SD, Korycansky DG, Agnor CB. 2008. Implications of an impact origin for the martian hemispheric dichotomy. Nature 453:1220–1223. DOI: 10.1038/nature07025.
July 05 2008 | Astronomy | Comments Off
