by ·Comments Off on Save the fastest running gene in the galaxy!

If, like me, you delight in advance at the possibility of one day being diagnosed with an incurable disease linked to a gene named after the world’s most famous blue hedgehog, feel free to circulate the following petition:

Dear fellows at the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Guidelines Committee,

It has recently come to my attention that you have decided to do away with names deemed “inappropriate or offensive” found in the existing international gene nomenclature.

I couldn’t agree more: I always thought that the officially registered name for gene kill-all-the-Jews-and-drink-their-blood was a bit politicised for a scientific setting.

Whatever you do, however, keep your hands off gene SHH, otherwise officially known as sonic hedgehog homolog (Drosophila) gene. We like it the way it is (blue, spiky and running very fast). Beside, what better way to break the news of some potentially fatal gene mutation disease to a kid, than by introducing a beloved computer game mascot!

PS: and for chrissake, drop the Comic Sans font: it makes your world-class gene database website look like it was coded by a 1st year CS student in 1991 (yes, I know: it probably was).

Love,

by ·Comments Off on Template This

Am I the only one absolutely befuddled that a multi-billion dollar company that has had over two decades to iron out the details of its poor excuse for a enterprise-standard word processor, has never managed to come up with one single passable built-in template for business letters?

And I am not talking about their “Fantasy” or even “Elegant” letter templates, which would make my niece’s MySpace page seem sober and sophisticated by comparison. No: I am referring to their most basic, no-frills, “Business modern” template, which still manages to look like the caricature of a “don’t” example in a primer on business etiquette and communication (pro tip: the fact that your monitor has colours, and possibly so does your printer, doesn’t mean you should try to stuff the entire rainbow in your official print documents).

Time to start writing my mail with LaTeX.

by ·2 Comments

Sensei: Blah blah blah… international collaboration project… blah blah blah… grant submission accepted… blah blah blah… Five year budget.

Dave: Great. But, huh, how does it affect me?

Sensei: How would you feel about going to Berlin or Boston for three months? All expenses paid, of course.

Dave: Sure, what’s the schedule and which project would I be working on?

Sensei: Oh, it’s entirely up to you, just pick the faculty and project you’d like to work on and a time during this fiscal year you’d like to go. Where would you prefer: Berlin or Boston?

Dave: Dunno. Both are nice. Does either include daily spa and massage, by any chance?

Sensei: If you want, you can do one country this year and the other next year.

Dave: You don’t say.

Sensei: We’ll also send you to their workshop in Boston this Summer anyway.

Dave: Recession hasn’t hit our lab yet, has it…

by ·Comments Off on Can’t help staring…

Terminal screenshot

Since about age 5, I have come to grasp with the notion that staring at an oven timer doesn’t make it cook a cake faster.

And yet, I still seem to think that staring at the live output of my painstakingly slow linear optimization program is gonna make it spit its final value faster.