Work Notes of an Insomniac DIY Biologist

In which I come up for air, and play with github code snippets

2010-11-24T07:25:00.000-05:00

I've been buried recently in job hunting, after having moved from Manhattan to San Francisco. Long story, and if I don't know you, I'm not likely (nor willing) to bore you with the details. Anyway, this effort has generally required I demonstrate my programming chops - over, and over, and over - and in the process of doing so, I've found I need to document bits and pieces of environment

Memebusters Episode 1: "Einstein Never Said That"

2010-10-29T02:27:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, I posted a short, awkward, mainly Epic Fail version of the "Bible's broken" scene between the characters of Shepherd Book and River Tam from the Firefly series. I was playing with the text-to-video tools from Xtranormal, and no one who's not already a fan of the original Joss Whedon series should pay attention to my shaky first effort: it sucks. But it was an interesting learning

In which I commence exploring the Uncanny Valley firsthand

2010-10-25T04:37:00.000-04:00

I've been fascinated recently with the idea of text-to-video translation tools. Having seen some amusing YouTube product using the Xtranormal service, I figured I'd try my own hand at it. These tools are usually employed to render a couple of characters bantering lines fed into a speech and video rendering engine. Despite some rather obvious limitations, the results are often entertaining, so the

On the importance of sequenced model organisms, & a crude taxonomy of their users

2010-10-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

I've carved out some time recently to meet and interact with more of those people, like myself, who identify with the nascent DIYbio community. It's been a genuine pleasure. Some of this networking has happened at summer conferences, such as H+ Summit held at Harvard and Open Science Summit at Berkeley, as well as at smaller, less formal events, including one held earlier last week at a downtown

In which, unable to sleep, I inaugurate a mostly politics-free DIY biology blog.

2010-09-24T04:03:00.000-04:00

I used to blog, some years ago. I wrote some couple of thousand entries across three self-hosted MovableType managed blogs. One of those blogs took over over my "free time." Eventually, I dropped the lesser blogs into the bit bucket and let their domain names expire. I continued posting to the remaining blog; in the fullness of time, I let that remaining one go dormant. My reasons for dropping