Zoiks! Is it just me (Firefox 2.0.0.11) or did someone (<cough> adulau <cough>) forget to close a [bold] tag in their RSS feed?
Zoiks! Is it just me (Firefox 2.0.0.11) or did someone (<cough> adulau <cough>) forget to close a [bold] tag in their RSS feed?
While using truly Free software allows totally unrestrained joy when passing on tips and tricks to others, there's still some happiness to be gained when the software is proprietary but the recipients of the tip are people with whom you work. Here in the Real World[TM] I have to deal with (non computer) hardware manufacturers who sell overpriced computers running horrible equipment control software and who refuse to give you the "administrator" password, presumably because they believe you'd immediately copy the kludgey software to a more affordable box. Argh! Mercifully there's also equipment specific software written by Real Programmers and they've embedded macro languages that allow you to express yourself and get the job done. Thank you, Oh Sensible Ones! Today I managed to use such a a TIMTOWTDI rich macro language in a strange way and it was clearly The Right Way. It was so beautiful. My co-workers immediately appreciated the extra stability and efficiency, if not the beauty of the code. That was reward enough.
But what if I was working on a project on primate flatulence? How would I find the information I need?
As I mentioned earlier,
I have been allowed some time to play with Mathematica at
work. I
tried to assess it by transliteration of some of those popPK
spreadsheets and in doing so it has grown on me. I do like
the ability
of the random number generator to produce real numbers over
a specified range. For Excel I had been forced to use
RANDBETWEEN() (which only generates integers) and
scale by a large number - this led to many off-by-epsilon
rounding errors. Now I can precalculate the log-normal
probabilities of each of the target limits of the PK
parameters with;
CDF[LogNormalDistribution[mean,
cv/100*mean], Exp[value]]
and then generate a table
of random parameter values for the population
with;
myList =
Table[Log[Quantile[LogNormalDistribution[myMedian,
myCV/100*myMedian], Random[Real, {myMinProb, myMaxProb}]]],
{populationSize}];
This seems to be a small price to
pay for having to use studlyCaps for variable names and for
forever forgetting to use square brackets instead of
parentheses and double square brackets instead of
singles. The other major gotcha was not realising that you
have to initialise an array (e.g. by setting to
Null) if you
want to subsequently add values to it piecemeal (the error
messages generated are way too arcane).
I also had to change my approach when switching programs as in Mathematica it is actually easier to plot a function defined symbolically than it is to generate a bunch of x,y values and use them.
It has been a while since I tried DOSBox so I gave it another whirl and am amazed at just how well it copes with some old programs. I may be able to retire my old 486/66 that I keep around "just in case".
So I can cross another supplier (and another vendor I'd endorse) off my list.
In addition to frequently falling into the well-recognised wikipedia trap and being distracted by reality I've noticed that I've now come to see inane email at work as slarshdawt articles and feel the urge to apply tags appropriately. Alas there's no way of making useful tags have an effect on those that most need them.
Thanks to Sun I now have the free (gratis) Solaris 10 DVD set. After sending my request in January I had given up hope as the intermediary who was mailing them emailed me to tell me that I hadn't filled out an application (so how did they get my contact information?). I've dabbled with Solaris 7 and 8 in the past, both x86 and SPARC, but the inclusion of Sun Studio on the latest set was what had sparked my interest. Hmmm... I have no idea if I can add an ATAPI DVD-ROM to my Ultra 5. Otherwise I'll try it out on a spare x86 box.
I was showing some of the modeling output (with Excel [sigh] rather than the Ti89) to my colleagues. There're two general reactions. The first group can see what I am up to and are fascinated that by using lab-determined enzymological and cellular parameters and basic biophysics I can predict more complex results. The other people stare at it and seem to be awaiting an Out of Cheese Error or the thing that goes "Boing!" or somesuch. "Yes, its a model but I'm only interested in real life"
For some reason this is the Scary Go Round that had me laughing loudest.
I only just noticed that I am certified as a Master on Advogato. I have no idea why (longevity?) and I definitely do not deserve it. Maybe badvogato has Advogato-juice.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!