http://sphaerula.com/wordpress A science weblog by Conrad Halling Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:03:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en These are my annotated tweets for the week of 3 August 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version. Google ads 2008-08-03: Clueless Google ads on twittercounter.com: ad for granite counter tops, ad for quartz counter tops, and ad for counter-terrorism degrees. This is an example ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-3-august-2008/ These are my annotated tweets for the week of 27 July 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. Differences in Nomenclature for Structures of GPCRs 2008-07-27: Last night I read two Nature papers about structures of GPCRs. Different nomenclature in the papers frustrates indexing and searching. The authors of the two papers ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-27-july-2008/ 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 ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-20-july-2008/ 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 ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-13-july-2008/ 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 ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-6-july-2008/ 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 ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-29-june-2008/ 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 ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/astronomy/cosmic-cataclysms-and-the-martian-hemispheric-dichotomy/ The 20 June 2008 issue of Science contains a paper by Art Löytynoja and Nick Goldman titled “Phylogeny-aware gap placement prevents errors in sequence alignment and evolutionary analysis.” The authors tackled the difficult problem of how to handle correctly the placement of insertions and deletions in a multiple sequence alignment. ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/bioinformatics/more-accurate-multiple-sequence-alignment/ These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 22 June 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. 2008-06-22: Jeff’s wise words in Stack Overflow podcast #10: “Your job as a manager is to throw yourself on grenades to protect me from being interrupted.” 2008-06-22: The only earphones worse than the earphones Apple ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-22-june-2008/ These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 15 June 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. 2008-06-17: In This Week in Tech #147, John C. Dvorak displays vast ignorance regarding investing or water supply. Can we believe anything he says? 2008-06-17: In my search for high-quality science fiction, I have found ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-15-june-2008/ These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 8 June 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. 2008-06-08: I really enjoy the Stack Overflow podcast. But I would never use the Microsoft technologies they advocate. 2008-06-09: I spent the day converting some old K&R-format C code to ANSI C. It's been a ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-8-june-2008/ These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 1 June 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. 2008-06-01: Bradley Headstone, the obsessed schoolmaster in Our Mutual Friend by Dickens, is one of the world's first completely socially inept nerds. 2008-06-01: See Rosie Redfield's Rrresearch blog for a great example of how profiling Perl ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-1-june-2008/ These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 25 May 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling. 2008-05-25: I finished "The Mind Readers". The mystery wasn't mysterious, the science fiction wasn't science, and Albert Campion wasn't interesting. 2008-05-25: Like many other science geeks, I'm watching coverage of the Mars Phoenix lander.... Only ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-25-may-2008/ Take a Ford and a Chevrolet, two automobiles that were intelligently designed. Now, try to take the engine from the Ford and put it in a Chevrolet. Does it fit? Can it be used? The answer is no. How about the door handle? The answer is no again. How about ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/biology/a-thought-on-evolution/ I obtained a Twitter account last week. These are my lightly edited tweets for the week of 18 May 2008. Follow me at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling/. 2008-05-18: 14-mile long run this morning on the Minute Man Bikeway. I stupidly didn't carry water, so I was extremely dehydrated at the end. 2008-05-19: The term "efficient ... http://sphaerula.com/wordpress/microblog/twitter-for-week-of-18-may-2008/