These are my annotated tweets for the week of 31 August 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Data Visualization
2008-08-31: NY Times article about IBM’s many-eyes data visualization site.
The human brain can pick out patterns from visual data that a computer can’t see yet. But we’re limited to three dimensions. Eventually, computers will “visualize” multidimensional data in ways that we can’t. I predict this will lead to scientific breakthroughs.
Moving Day in Boston
2008-08-31: This is the weekend everyone in Boston moves. It’s a shame that I’m so “busy” that I don’t have time to help my friends and relatives.
Hurricane Gustav Disrupts Republican National Convention
2008-09-01: The silver lining in Gustav’s cloud and big break for McCain: Speeches by Bush and Cheney at Republican National Convention are canceled.
I despise Bush and Cheney and everything they stand for.
Perl Programming
2008-09-01: It’s a holiday, so of course I’m working. Today I’ve been writing three new Perl modules from scratch. It’s boring writing accessor methods.
2008-09-02: w00t! I solved a programming problem today using recursion. Some days I wish I had more formal training in software engineering.
Lights Out In Boston
2008-09-03: It’s about time we quit wasting energy lighting the interiors of skyscrapers at night. Lights out in Boston.
Light pollution is horrible here; I can see only the brightest stars at night.
Journal Club
2008-09-03: I just finished getting ready for tomorrow’s journal club. I read several extra papers for background, and I prepared 26 slides.
I like to provide lots of background before I get to the hard stuff.
Systems Administration
2008-09-05: I’ve been doing systems administration this week. I installed EMBOSS 6.0.1 yesterday; today I set up a subversion server.
A bioinformatician wears many hats.
Twitter Is Improving
2008-09-05: Twitter is improving. I have seen no fail whales for many weeks now. And today I could read 14 pages of tweets instead of 10.
Traumatized by Education
2008-09-06: Early this morning I had one of those recurring dreams where I’m taking a final exam but I don’t know most of the answers.
Programming with R
2008-09-06: Today I purchased Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R, by John M. Chambers. This book is an up-to-date guide to R programming.
