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Day 2, Cr-48: Wifi issues

posted Friday, February 11, 2011 4:20 PM by hussain

Cognitive load and cognitive burden - having to learn new keyboard and touchpad behaviors; wanting to learn more existing shortcuts for Docs and Mail. I’m really getting used to the touch pad, the light touch to click, the two finger swipe to scroll, much quicker than the keyboard shortcuts for home/end of line pageup/pagedown.

I have both a Nexus One and a Verizon MiFi and, in a limited connection room, I have to switch between the two which puts a pause in my writing in Google Docs (it has to reconnect).

Selecting via dragging is hard. Moving tabs, grab and select is hard.

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Day 1, Cr-48: Surprise

posted Thursday, February 10, 2011 9:16 AM by hussain

Surprise.
Heather calls me to tell me that, as she's backing out of the driveway, there's a package on the porch. Hello, Cr-48.

Hilarious written documentation for the battery and initial startup. Card stating, if you opened this up, Intel inside. Great intro/welcome webapp. Jealous of the javascript animations.

Getting used to the keyboard without a lot of the conventional keys. Carrying around and taking notes - perfect, once the page up, page down (alt up, alt down) shortcuts were found. Struggling with some of the keyboard shortcuts, though. ctrl-alt-up, ctrl-alt-down; home, end. The on-screen keyboard shortcut help is really handy. Fish vs. Pony (I have a Fish)

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App A Weekend: My First Android App

posted Thursday, November 04, 2010 8:40 PM by hussain

Edit 11/08/2010 - I was inaccurate when I stated that the NRCS WAI has only a SOAP/RPC access - it has GET and POST as well. I'm currently revising my Android app to parse the WAI XML.

First things first: it’s aboot time.  I’ve spent enough time dinking around with Android that this post should’ve occurred a long time ago.  So, here it is, enjoy.

Recently, I developed an Android application to access the USDA NRCS’s public Where Am I? (WAI) service.  The WAI service provides land-related information from a geospatial location within the United States.  This took about the equivalent of a weekend (16 hours or so), but it was spread out over about a week, so I'm still calling this an "App a Weekend" entry. Deal with it. There are a few gotchas and points along the way that are worth noting as I developed this application.

The Where Am I? service provides information for a geospatial point on the map: Congressional District Code, ID, Name, Congressperson’s name, Hydrologic Unit Code, Major Land Resource Area, City, State, Zip, and Tribal Land ID/Name, among other information.  The service drills through multiple layers of geospatial data and gives back an attribute list.  Useful for some purposes when doing land-based assessment as a lot of NRCS applications may do, what with them being the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The idea for the WAI Android application came from my work inventorying potentially enterprise-ready existing shareable services at the NRCS, which ones are being shared, and which ones were intended to be shared.  Additionally, some discussions with developers at the USDA about mobile access to NRCS data services needed some level of pragmatic understanding.  Why not write an Android app and exercise the API just enough to make a semi-useful app and exercise the end-to-end Android dev process?

Semi-Useful Design

My intended design was to have an Android application that not only displayed a map from which the visible latitude and longitude could be obtained but also use the geolocation services of the Android device (GPS, network) to obtain the latitude and longitude.  The geospatial coordinates could then be passed to WAI and the WAI attribute results would be displayed.  Pretty straighforward.

The Where Am I? Service

The WAI service is written in .NET and exposed as ASMX which provides a WSDL as an API.  A few issues with this right off the bat.  Android has no native SOAP client to dynamically create a proxy.  There is, of course the Apache Axis library, but those are huge, ~8mb, and the proxy client built by Axis is also pretty large.  Size is an issue in any mobile app and including libraries not specifcally optimized for the platform's not recommended. There’s an Android implementation of ksoap2, but there were lots of comments of its usability and feasability, so I passed on that one.  Additionally, XML parsing is reputed to be quite expensive in Android.  Another issue is that the WAI service is hosted behind a port redirector and therefore WSDL for the service indicates its endpoint at port 42500, which is incorrect.  This issue causes dynamically generated SOAP proxies to fail.  The work around is to manually generate the proxy (using wsdl.exe in .NET for example) and then manually correcting the port.  SOAP access to WAI seems less and less likely.

For a mobile device, it really seems like a REST/document style interface with json would be better than an RPC style interface, given the potential size of a proxy client and supporting libraries. Why not write one?

The REST Service for WAI

I wrote a very quick REST service using ASP.NET MVC2 and pushed this app to Azure, http://wai.cloudapp.net

It has a very basic human user interface and some documentation on the single existing REST method.  Currently, there's one method on the controller that takes lat and lon value, calls the USDA NRCS SOAP webservice via a manual proxy class, and returns a full set of data attributes as a JsonResult object.

Creating an Azure app from an existing MVC2 app was cake - add a Windows Azure Cloud Service project to the existing solution. Publishing to Azure was surprizingly easy, with one hitch: our worktops are XPSP3 and the latest Azure SDK for VisualStudio 2010 will only work on Vista/7.  I published to the cloud using my personal laptop (Windows 7).

It might’ve been slicker to use Google App Engine to host the REST proxy, but the nerd humor of a GOOG app calling MSFT service can't be beat.

Finally, the Android App

With the REST service in place, utilizing in an Android app was a snap.  Obtaining a GPS/Network location from the device is well explained in the online SDK.  Writing a REST client in Java within a thread is as you’d expect (although this is not the recommended pattern, see this very informative talk from I/O on Developing REST Client Applications; a talk I opted not to attend and am grateful they posted the talk and pdf slides online).

I made a main Activity class that contains the Maps MapView, one for the Aboot and WAI Results dialog boxes, and another for the Preferences (an upcoming enhancement). Two straight Java classes, a REST client to house static methods around issuing an HttpClient GET call, and an interface class for my RestRequestCallback that my main Activity implemented in order to get the info back from the threat that starts the REST call.

I obtained a Google Maps API key in order to utilize the Google Maps API, which is separate from the default Android API.  It’s used in order to enable the tile service of the Maps API to function.  Also, I had a development (“debug”) key per machine I was developing on (I used both my desktop and laptop to develop the app).  This meant i had to keep changing the hash string that enabled the Maps API in the view layout, which wasn’t hard, just slightly inconvenient.

Testing on the emulator's really easy and I'm always impressed with the SDK's qemu running Android. Once started, it's snappy and responsive. The emulator has no GPS, so you've got to push a lat, lon to it via the DDMS emulator interface ui or via telnetting to the emulator and issuing a "geo fix lon, lat" command to simulate a location fix. Incidentally, there's a Galaxy Tab add-on for the SDK so you can skin the emulator to look like the upcoming 7" device, if you're so inclined.

Signing an application is actually really easy from within Eclipse -  it’s a menu item added to the right-click context menu by the Android SDK plug-in.  It’s not really that hard via the command line, either.

Publishing to the Android Market was also an interesting experience.  You upload the apk (compiled Android app) and a few screenshots (optional).  Once you do, there’s an entry in the developer listing.  And it can’t be removed.  Even if you unpublish your app, the app remains in your list (not on the Market, but in your developer dashboard for the Market).  I initially compiled my app in a very generic namespace, net.bespokesystems, and then wanted to change it to net.bespokesystems.demo.RestLocation, a much better namespace.  Seems like the namespace is the key for the developer dashboard, so no changing that - got to publish a new app.  And wouldn’t you know, can’t remove the app from my dashboard.  So, although unpublished, there’s an app entry that’s there.  At the time, there were no users of the app (I’d installed the apk manually on my Nexus One), but after a few days, oddly, there were!  It seems like there must be people who automate installation of apps as they’re published, maybe some feed that I’m unaware of plus a delay in reporting of installations.  I’d literally had the poorly-namespaced app published in the Market for less than 20 min.  I’ll have to follow up on either on the dev mailing lists or irc channel to determine some of the Market's logistics. One thing I didn't have to do was wait (I'm looking at you Apple App Store).

Using the Google Chart API for QR codes, I created the clever little QR image above that, when scanned with the Barcode Scanner app on your Android phone, directs you to the download for the app on the Market.

There are some interesting bits in the Android app lifecycle - rotating the screen pauses and restarts the app - and as a developer one has to accomodate for saving state.  I got a bit into the Preferences API, alternate layouts and screen depths, and making a simple icon.

I hope to place both the Android app and the Azure MVC app in a public repository soon for anyone who wants to see some awesome slapdash code.

A few ideas on future updates:

... for the Android app

  • Use a better pattern for accessing REST services
  • Allow the user to change the map type, from satellite to road
  • Reduce REST query timeout to accomodate for NRCS WAI service response timeouts
  • General polish (release notes, proper liste provider for WAI results)
  • Better control over GPS/Network/Wifi location behavior

... for the WAI REST service include

  • REST methods to allow the request to specify which WAI attributes to return
  • Google map for the UI piece
  • Reduce timeout to NRCS WAI service and add a single retry to accomodate for the NRCS WAI service’s timeout issues
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D'Souza on Obama - Selling Books

posted Thursday, September 23, 2010 4:26 PM by hussain

Jack - [3:59 PM]:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html

Hussain - [3:59 PM]:
I read that.

Jack - [3:59 PM]:
You like?

Hussain - [3:59 PM]:
D'Souza's projecting. The very definition of American is anti-colonialist. After WW2 we abandoned our protectionists ways and have accepted our anti-colonialist ways. Look at the name at his upcoming book. He's a hater. He's promoting his book and his flawed perspective. It's not a bad argument, it's just for his head, not Obama's.

Jack - [4:02 PM]:
I dunno, the label "anti-colonialist" might be bad, but I don't think he's far off in identifying Obama's motivations.

Hussain - [4:02 PM]:
I was going to write a blog post about it, but that's the essence. Anti-colonialist isn't bad, but D'Souza makes it out to be. That's the cleverness of his projection, it's not far off if you want to see it in a socialist-hater way.

Jack - [4:03 PM]:
But then why is it projection? He's not anitcolonialist, is he?

Hussain - [4:03 PM]:
The problem is he's a hater, so he casts what's good about America - being anti-colonialist - in some negative light. No he's an Indian of some sort, and has British colonialist baggage. He is an anti-colonialist, but a non-socialist, hero-like one. He clearly doesn't like Obama's dickrider, socialist reclaiming of "anti-colonialist." He's the arbiter of anti-colonialism.

Jack - [4:04 PM]:
Reclaiming? Didn't they always own it?

Hussain - [4:04 PM]:
Apart from my psychobabble, the root of the issue is whether anti-colonialism is American or not American. It's American.

Jack - [4:05 PM]:
I associate it with the modern left.

Hussain - [4:05 PM]:
Why?

Jack - [4:05 PM]:
At least as he defines it.

Hussain - [4:05 PM]:
America's very roots are anti-colonialist. The very.

Jack - [4:06 PM]:
Well, I don't feel like there was much of an idea of worrying about "the other guy" util maybe the 1960s. Hence "modern."

Hussain - [4:06 PM]:
Beleiving that people have the right to be soverign nations is how we were founded and then after WW2 we started asserting on it. More like 1930's

Jack - [4:07 PM]:
Ok, but I was thinking it was more a financial thing. Like, clearly they US has been "not about having colonies of its own" since day 1.

Hussain - [4:07 PM]:
That's a distraction/cleverbit by D'Souza.

Jack - [4:07 PM]:
So I see what you're saying.

Hussain - [4:07 PM]:
Tying it to that veers you in that way. A cornerstone of the argument is linking anti-colonialism to socialism. The problem is it's feeble. Not only not having their own, but also not being one.

Jack - [4:08 PM]:
Well, it's more like I was already over there, and then he said "by the way, where you are is called 'anti-colonialism'" and I said "fine, whatever."

Hussain - [4:08 PM]:
Well, sure That's why if you're a hater, it's a clever ruse. You're there, here's another term to call it. Make a sign next Tea Party.

Jack - [4:08 PM]:
Like, for me, Obama is part of a movement that's about a global socialist government.

Hussain - [4:08 PM]:
Make sure to spell it right lest you get youtubed writing "MORAN" Well, that's definitely an opinion, probably one D'Souza holds, and is now leveraging to sell "The Roots of Obama's Rage" Why doesn't he go about just talking about the logical ties from socialism to Obama? Why does he try to distract with core American-ness (aka anticolonialism) He literally shoots himself in the foot, causing Rage. But, selling books.

Jack - [4:10 PM]:
Well, I think the word is wrong, but I don't think he's wrong about the motivations.

Hussain - [4:10 PM]:
I'm sure his pseudointellectualism will do a lot to further confuse the debate. Like the Christian Right has done to the Tea Party. That's opinion, though, not backed by even the arguments in the article.

Jack - [4:11 PM]:
I think that Obama really thinks the world will be better if the wealth is spread around the WHOLE world.

Hussain - [4:11 PM]:
He keeps tying things to anti-colonialism as if that's socialism. Anti-colonialism is explicitly self-sustaining soverign nations. His definition of socialism is loose enough to snare you. Especially in this economy, it's enough to snare anyone. "Hell no, he's not spending my hard earned $1.05 on Brathillianz!" Like, really? No, not really. After WW2, we help people. Prior, we were very protectionist. We still have R-party members who are insistant on being retroactives, and that's fine, it's in our history. Pretending that we're excessively helpy is an edge argument. It'll sell a book, though.

Jack - [4:14 PM]:
Well, it's not really important to me that it be called "socialism." I think that's an accurate term for what Obama wants, but whatever.

Hussain - [4:14 PM]:
That's ok, too, but note, that farts on D'Souza's argument and we're off his deal. I happen to agree with you, but not with the rhetorical slight of hand D'Souza's pulling.

Jack - [4:15 PM]:
The only reason I'm sorta "meh" about what you're saying is that I responded to what he was saying by trying to understand it in terms that I like, as opposed to really worrying about how he was saying it. Like, I can see you point, but I just connected the dots so they made sense for me, rather than really listening to him.

Hussain - [4:16 PM]:
Sure, I understand. I get that and that's how D'Souza will sell books. Sure. It's how you win arguments, hearts, then minds. Much later minds, if they can even be counted on to pay attention.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
Is there as much Obamabacklash as it seems like?

Hussain - [4:17 PM]:
Plunk down the $22 on the book first, then whaawhaa about the argument. I don't think so, but the media's all about it. They love a fire.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
I dunno, the comments...

Hussain - [4:17 PM]:
You know my opinion on the media.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
I always look at the comments. Obviously they're always "U NO HE A SOCALIS! NO FANK!"

Hussain - [4:18 PM]:
I do, too.

Jack - [4:18 PM]:
But lately they're all anti-Obama. And annoyingly so.

Hussain - [4:18 PM]:
I think the article's misleading, but cleverly so, so I don't trust the comments. In this case.

Jack - [4:19 PM]:
I was promised that he was magic. But he's not magic! I am losing hope for change.

Hussain - [4:19 PM]:
Lately, everyone's got some frustration to pin on Obama, the big target, too.

Jack - [4:20 PM]:
"WHY HIM NOT MAKE JOB FOR ME??"

Hussain - [4:20 PM]:
Well, what I thought after realizing D'Souza cleverness (which is quite clever) was that Geez, Obama's actually doing what he said he would, he's keeping hope alive. People just aren't in the mood for that shit right now, but he's holding true. It's not going to help him.

Jack - [4:20 PM]:
Is he a one termer?

Hussain - [4:20 PM]:
If you're right around here, for example, it's wholly irrelevant, you just have to be the one they like. Too early.

Jack - [4:21 PM]:
I dunno, you might be right, I'll ask Carl.

Hussain - [4:21 PM]:
The R's + the Tea Party might blow their wad this midterm.

Jack - [4:21 PM]:
Yeah.

Hussain - [4:21 PM]:
I wouldn't count the D's, or really Obama, out yet. The Tea Party is embarassing, though. If they really sway the R's, they'll fall off the wagon and go Gibson.

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Wolfram|Alpha & AZ Crime Rates

posted Wednesday, August 04, 2010 2:15 PM by hussain

This is a test of a very simple Wolfram|Alpha beta widget about Arizona Crime Rates:

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Illumina to sequence genome for $19.5k

posted Wednesday, June 16, 2010 6:27 AM by hussain

Your Genome Is Coming, June 3, 2010, Forbes
Illumina, maker of sequencing machines, announced a MD-requested full genome sequence price of $19,500.

A great chart from Gregory Lucifer of Life Technologies showing the cost of sequencing a human genome vs. Moore's Law, below.

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H+ Summit Links

posted Monday, June 14, 2010 8:24 AM by hussain

The H+ Summit was this weekend at Harvard and was live broadcast on the web. In a while, H+'ll have sessions on line. Until then, a few links:

Of random interest:

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Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition on the Lenovo S10-2

posted Sunday, May 02, 2010 7:47 AM by hussain

The Lenovo S10-2, with it's oversmall keyboard and smallish screen, has taken a permanent back seat to the iPad for livingroom and wandering around computing. The S10-2 has Windows 7 on it, a process which took a while, so I figured that I'd experiment and put the latest Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition on it to see if it was snappy and responsive. UNE is supposed to have a new layout / launcher that's geared towards netbooks.

The download site has a link that describes how to create a bootable USB, which is great. Great because 1) the Lenovo S10-2 has no CD drive, 2) there weren't any good clear instructions on how to do this for the Windows 7 upgrade I'd performed and 3) the instructions were provided right there, on the download page, not some "go to this shady site" reference.

Creating a USB stick went fairly smoothly and I was able to get a stick that'd boot, granted I had to hit F12 in the startup process to choose the USB stick, and perusing the UNE interface in livecd mode gave me confidence. The wacky "application as tabs" sort of thing and the left tab-section for applications as "apps" seemed to work for the small screen.

There were multiple issues, though, when I wanted to pull the trigger and install the OS on to this machine.

First, Avira antivirus had to be disabled to use usb-creator. Pretty minor, really. The usb-creator.exe is provided on the iso of ubuntu, so mounting the iso, grabbing the exe, and then running it was no problem. Avira chirped at an unknown autorun.inf, which is a good thing for antiviruses to do.

Second, my USB stick was NTFS formatted and usb-creator likes FAT32, so I reformatted it.

Third, there's an option in usb-creator to store documents and settings on the USB when starting up from the USB. Don't choose it, choose instead the "discarded on shutdown, unless you save them elsewhere" option. Ubuntu won't boot in livecd mode or install mode with that option chosen. It'll drop to a command prompt with the error "can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow". Really frustrating. I googled around until I found a few helpful hints and was able to get past that.

Fourth, and most importantly, the Lenovo partition scheme seems to be the blocker when installing. Ubuntu can't figure it out and "parted_server" crashes after the "choose your keyboard setup" screen in the wizard. I found a few references to that on the internets, but nothing was terribly helpful, so I ended up booting in livecd mode and using Ubuntu's disk management Disk Utility to wipe all the partitions. I wasn't going to be using Win7 and the Lenovo restore partition was only good for XP, so bye-bye Windows 7, helo Ubuntu.

Until ChromeOS comes around.

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Islam in the News Roundup

posted Saturday, May 01, 2010 2:33 PM by hussain

My brother's a graduate student at University of Chicago who gets opportunities to speak at various events, including this one, "Sundays at Rockefeller." Being a graduate student, the news isn't always as prominent in his noise stream as for us civilians (lucky him), so when he asked me:

Abbas: have any policians or media figures said anything really nutso about islam lately? :)
I practically jumped out of my seat.

So, for you, dear readers, I present Islam in the News Roundup.

Belgium bans the Veil, France trying to follow, Christian Science Monitor 04/30/2010

"The burqa has no place in France" - French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Previously, Swiss voters barred Muslims from building minarets in a referrendum held in December.
"Once we solve the burqa problem, we'll still have the problem of polygamy, of praying in the streets of big cities, of banning pork from cafeterias, in short all the sectarian demands the French are confronted with daily" - French far right leader, Marine Le Pen
Belgian lawmakers vote to ban full-face veils in public, Washington Post, 04/30/2010

Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, booted from 05/06/2010 Pentagon prayer service for calling Islam a "very violent religion," and Sarah Palin defending him

Great contrast between the military, who's supposed to be apolitical and the Congress, who's nothing but pandering political simps. Apart from the WashPo story on how the military's move could be psyops, it's a good example as to how "political Islam" is more of a term applicable to how non-muslims handle Islam in America. Oh, and earlier in Apirl a federal court ruled that the National Day of Prayer, established by Congress in 1952, was unconstitutional on separation of church and state grounds.
Other super smooth comments by Franklin include:
  • "I don't believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion."
  • "wicked, violent and not of the same God."
Last on this topic, I'm aware that most of the links are to "lefty" blogs/newspapers. Clearly, like tons of armed white men tea partying on Washington, anti-Islam rhetoric is ignorable by most white America and a given in the media.

The Pope, trying to get out from under pedophiles and his 2006 comments regarding Islam, states you have to work with Islam
Pope: African church must work with Islam, UPI, 04/30/2010

In an audience Thursday at the Vatican with bishops from Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the pope urged them to "continue to promote dialogue with other religions and above all with Islam," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Here, I'm not so clear whether he means the full Church or just those in Africa.

Tariq Ramadan, banned from taking a tenured position at Notre Dame during the Bush administration has his travel restrictions removed by the Obama administration.

Formerly Banned Muslim Scholar Tours U.S., 04/29/2010
Although he's touring in the US, he says he wouldn't now teach in the US (New York Mag, 04/08/2010) - exactly what he was going to do in 2004. He's now at Oxford. That's a step up, I'd say. Some decent commentary by Ramadan about the past administration and how Islam is viewed in America or Europe from someone on the outside, literally.

Last, but not least, Ayatollah Sedighi who said that indecent fashion causes earthquakes.

  • Do immodestly dressed women really cause earthquakes?, Fitsnews, 04/27/2010. This link has cleavage!
  • Iranian cleric: Promiscuous women cause quakes, AP, 04/19/2010
    "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
  • A minor footnote is the media getting all excited about some girl who created a Fasebook page and called it Boobquake. Yawn.
If American politicians and talking heads can condescend and pander to special interest groups, what's wrong with a little red meat from an Ayatollah (or, I guess that'd be, a little less red meat)? This is a non-story, except that it's a hilarious cultural / rhetorical difference fault point that lots of people can stuff their personal peccadillos into (that's what she said!), such as feminism, supposed oppression of women, ignorance, blah blah, boring.

I guess anything that gets women to highlight their boobies can't be bad. Rock on Hujjat al-Islam Sedighi.

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Genetics Roundup

posted Friday, April 30, 2010 11:15 PM by hussain

Stanford bioengineer explores own genome, 04/30/2010, Silicon Valley Mercury News

Lucky bastard.

A decade ago, sequencing of the first-ever whole genome by the federal government took many years and cost $400 million to $500 million. Quake's machine, the size of a freezer, sequenced his human genome in only four weeks, for $50,000. The procedure is expected to cost $10,000 by the end of this year.

U. scientist links one gene to intelligence, 04/22/2010, Salt Lake Tribune

Interesting. STX1A has a variant on SNPedia, Rs3793243.

The gene in question plays a central role in neuro-transmission, particularly in the areas of the brain associated with learning, memory and fear.
"We're talking about a basic utility when we look at STX1A," [Julie] Korenberg said. "This study shows in part how nature's hand shapes intelligence at the synapse."
... She and colleagues at California institutions performed genetic testing on 65 patients with Williams Syndrome, an uncommon congenital developmental disorder that appears in only one in 20,000 births. People with the syndrome are genetically similar to other individuals except they are missing 27 genes.

SNPwatch: Genetic Variant May Impact Rate of Cognitive Decline in the Elderly, 04/26/2010, The Spittoon, 23andme's blog

Variants of Rs4680 have different effects over time.

New research, published recently in the journal Neurology, has found the surprising result that a genetic variant previously associated with better cognitive function in young people appears to have the opposite effect as people get older.
I'll be interested to see what my snps reveal, and also what sort of mitigation environmental effects might have.

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DNA Day Chat Transcription Expresses Humor

posted Sunday, April 25, 2010 5:01 PM by hussain

DNA Day chat room transcribes humor:

  • Q: James Woods Elementary in MA (5th grade student): My mom says she can never fit her genes. Can you fix her DNA so she can fit them?
  • A: Sarah Harding, M.P.H: Unfortunately, no...your genes pretty much stay the same from the day you are born. It's your environment that can change...Tell her to buy bigger pants.

2010 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript, genome.gov
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Today's favorite iPad App: Epicurious

posted Monday, April 05, 2010 10:25 PM by hussain

... and it's free!

From iPad Apps

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iPad Thoughts

posted Saturday, April 03, 2010 10:20 PM by hussain
Watching a video on the iPad is really nice - great clear, colorful HD screen - with one exception: the glare.  I watched a handbraked episode of Stargate Universe, as well as Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and an episode of Modern Family via the ABC Player iPad application.

Overall, the apps for the iPad - ones designed to take advantage of the larger screen - are wonderfully useful.

Specific iPad applications

The Yahoo! Entertainment app is much more useful than the web version.  It's too bad neither TiVo or MSN have iPad formatted apps like this.  Customizing TV listings is very intuitive, poking at on/off choices with a finger is even more intuitive than pointing and clicking with a mouse.

The NPR app is fun, too, with streaming access to affiliates as well as a triple stacked stacked news story layout.

The Yahoo! Entertainment app crashed a few times, as did the NPR app, returning to the home screen.

The IMDB application was really fun.  The wife and I sat around looking up movies and reading trivia and being silly running lines from The Karate Kid and Office Space.  All on the couch, without a keyboard.  That part truly shows off how the same data, different interface and in a movie-watching setting (couch) really can make the power of the internets click.  I understand why Steve says it's a magical device.

ABC Player is fantastic, access to watch shows on demand is reminiscent of Hulu.  I have to say that I was right on the edge of buying an iPad and the Modern Family episode featuring it had a little bit to contribute to pushing me over.  ABC being owned by Disney with Steve Jobs as a 7% shareholder probably had a something to do with that.

Cool Hunting and Gilt's apps are also really great; easy browsing of the articles and items to buy are formatted to take advantage of the screen and input style.  Here, also, Gilt's application has crashed once or twice on me.

With the larger storage space (I got the 32gb model), I think what might be an issue soon is more organization for certain applications.  It sure is nice to have space for a lot of music, but music doesn't need screen size as the successful iPod line can attest - videos and pictures do.  And both videos and pictures need some level of organization and categorization.  On iTunes, on the desktop, I can only select a single level of folders for photos, whereas on the iPad, it has a more sophisticated level of organization: all thumbnails, or view by date or view by location.  This is clever and pleasing.  With videos, it's just by all thumbnails and once people gear up and buy tv shows and movies via iTunes, some better level of organization will be needed.

Some Technical Thoughts

Using the various applications on the iPad makes me think of the early days of the World Wide Web when various different browsers were coming out and HTML implementations were fragmenting and CSS was implemented spottily.  The big angst and handwringing was about having to design a website multiple times just to cover all the browsers that were out there.  It's clear that there's a divide between web browsers made for desktop and laptop devices (15"+ lcds, but more likely 19"+) and handheld/phone devices (3.7" screens or so) - things that fit in your pocket.  The iPad is a new class of device - can't fit it in your pocket, but you don't want it to be a traditional computer - at about 9.5".  This is the size of the "netbook" which hasn't really caused any inspiration at all, except maybe in the NGO sector as cheap laptops for the developing world (see XO, etc.)

The varying interfaces are also of concern.  Right now, there're very few (free) iPad formatted apps.  That, of course, will change.  When Flash rose to prominence (and even now) the 

Another thought comes to mind with Windows 7 Phone Series - Microsoft's touting that you can write Silverlight (browser-based) or XNA (XBox 360) applications and have them run on WinMo7 devices.  This hearkens back to the horrible fail of Sun's tagline for Java "write once, deploy anywhere."  No one will want to run the same silverlight browser-based application (19"+ screen) or XBox game in the same format as a mobile device (3.7" screen).  They're two different types of media.

USB charging is an issue - it just doesn't work on (some) computers.  On all the ones I have, the iPad won't charge - I have to use a wall outlet.  There are apple support articles on this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4060 and http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049.

I took a peek at some of the crash logs and most of them appear to be Y! Entertainment out of memory ones and one Mobile Safari one.

Accessories

Seems like there're more accessories to shake a stick at yet, never the right ones.  In particular, there needs to be an unobtrusive and heavy stand that can hold the 1.5 lb iPad in landscape and, most importantly, the angled, top heavy portrait mode.  An ideal stand height would be about the height of the iPad's bezel, and black in color.  I'm temporarily using the WD TV stand I have and it's too light (can't hold the iPad in portrait mode) and too high (about twice the height of the iPad bezel), but it's functional.

The Macally ViewStand looks quite clever, mimicing an iMac type appearance for a landscape view: http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=325

The M-Edge Trip Jacket appeals to the Molskine lover in me: http://www.medgestore.com/products/ipad-trip.psp

I'd also like to see more clamp-type accessories so I can have the iPad at various angles in various places.
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Notes for Today

posted Sunday, March 07, 2010 7:14 PM by hussain

The Collatz Conjecture is a mathematical problem which states that given any number, and following a simple formula, converges to 1.

Take any number and do this:

  • If odd, multiply by 3 and add 1
  • If even, divide by 2
Repeat. You'll get to 1. Every time.

A comment about the latest xkcd comic's reference to the Collatz Conjecture, which I had never heard of before, lead me to create Hailstone sequence; my first Google AppEngine web app.

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Notes for Today, March 6th

posted Saturday, March 06, 2010 8:17 PM by hussain
Notes for Today: March 6, 2010

Back when I started my blog, I would have entries that were simply lists of links that I'd come across and thought worth sharing or brief events during the day.  Never mind "sharing with whom."  The impetus to share, presuming some sort of tenuous permanence seems like a decent rationale for blogging.

Today, one of the tabs open was a Wolfram|Alpha preview search for Academy Award nominations for the recent Star Trek movie (makeup, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects).  That lead me to the Star Trek wikipedia page where I read about some of the backstories on casting, etc.  I spent a few hours rewatching that awesome movie.

Saturday's my day to work myself into a little frenzy about savings etc, so I listened to Marketplace Money and called TiVo to follow up on cancelling my subscription from a long while back and that an acceptable refund was issued.  I still sort of want one of the new super cool HD TiVo Premiers because Comcast's DVR is just awful.

Later, I watch the latest episode of Caprica and lamented (privately) that the Facebook fan page for Caprica showed the closing climactic scene of Friday's episode as a preview last week, pretty much making episode 6 literally anticlimactic. I also looked up the word apotheosis that Sister Clarisse likes to say.

I read a recent first hand report of someone who attended Singularity U's executive conference and got to thinking about small-cap biotech ETFs as the next investment bubble.  A bit of Googling came to a decent seekingalpha article that mentioned XBI, BBH, and FBT.  Apparently, the Chinese government's bought $96m worth of Illumina genetic sequencing machines (@ $750k a pop) - the same machines used by personal genomics companies 23andme, decodeme, and counsyl. Will the new phrase be "cheap chinese genomes"?

Back to Singularity U, I watched Dr. Daniel Reda's talk on Biotechnology Fundamentals and wondered if I could memorize the RNA codes for all the amino acids. May be.  It's got to be like learning hex or anything else computational.

Optimization efficacy of evolutionary techniques

Natural selection
  • Slow!
  • Optimized for selecting the best replicators
  • Builds on previous adaptations (doesn't optimize best adaptations)
  • Optimization principle: Just good enough - ie selected for whatever's just good enough to pass on genes, not for any longer (healthy life, etc.)
Human Intelligence
  • Recombinant DNA technology - cut & paste via enzyme restriction endonuclease + ligase
  • DNA printer - writes DNA
  • http://www.bio-era.net/
Recursive AI


 If you haven't seen Harvard's BioVisions animation of the cell, you should.




Protein folding
    Game: http://fold.it/portal/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124207326903607931.html

"Killer Apps"
  • Drug metabolism
  • High-risk drugs

Edit, 04/25/2010 (DNA Day)

The new machine, the HiSeq2000, will begin shipping next month with a cost of $690,000 vs. $500,000 for Illumina's current model. It is being unveiled today at J.P. Morgan's investment conference in San Francisco. The Beijing Genomics Institute will be the first customer, purchasing 128 of the new machines.
Illumina's Cheap New Gene Machine Matthew Herper, 01.12.10, 03:00 PM EST
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