House Hunting

I've spent the weekend doing two things. No wait, three, of which two had to do with houses.

First on saturday morning, We (me and Marie) set off to Breda, to join my MI colleagues in the effort of bringing down the ceilings of Wendy's place. It was nice, I got to know the whole of her family, Henry (husband), Kirsten and Maren (daughters), Jasper (helpful son). Other colleagues were present as I said, Daniele, Pascal, Libuse, Theo, his wife keeping the little ladies entertained. Is that it? yes, that's it. Pretty heavy job a nice change for us, whose hardest work is pressing buttons, be them those of a keyboard, or at the most the coffee machine's.

At midday, I stopped that and started cooking my worldwide renowned pasta with bottarga (dried ovaries of cod-like fishes), who was very appreciated. I'd have called it a day, already, but it wasn't nearly done: whereas the other restarted to bring down the third room, Marie and me quickly changed and left for Mechelen, where we had six (!) houses/apartments to check.

Pretty good fun, if it hadn't been for some misunderstanding between me and various agents who messed up my carefully crafted timetable. But, (there's always a but) marie and me could not agree on any of the houses really. the stylish one which I liked (inhabited by a couple of (gay?) musicians had two very steep flight of stairs, which would make it very difficult to move stuff in and out. Another one, which I insisted for visiting, she liked but I absolutely hated. Old and badly mantained, with a nightmarish layout.

Luckily, we managed to intrude ourselves unexpected in a apartment which we both liked: no surprise, being it the most expensive of the bunch. here it is:



Click on it to go to the google map. I'd post the pictures, but hopefully the weblink will be broken once the house is taken off the market by ourselves. Anyway, as you can see from the pictures it's in a nice green area. the road it sits on is quite trafficked, there's a hypermarket just down the road, which is however a good thing for us - plus, over that wood in front there's a double rail-line, but nothing to fret about: the house is anyway new and quite well sound-proofed, so no troubles for sleeping at night (or at day, should we want to). The garden on the back is simply huge, and I can foresee many many barbecues in it. Of course me being me, I al;ready checked how far the nearest swimming pool is (2.8 Km):



The station is close enough for a bike ride every day, so hopefully i'll get rid of my car sometime in the near future. the idea is to move in the begin of june. Which incidentally means no africa trip, and I'm also going to forgo my training in perugia - substituted by a more useful one in Oxford anyway - end of June, so that I can move and settle down before leaving.

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of the sunny weather to stroll around at the national botanic garden in Meise:



Very nice place, we managed to go straight through it from the entrance in the village side 'til the greenhouses, which we visited in their entirety (albeit quickly). I'd like to post some pictures of the inside but they are crap since I didn't have my camera, only my mobile phone. X-P

In the afternoon, another tour of a nice green area, the region around the lake de la cambre (in Ixelles):



On the monday, no work for me, I tried to arrange a meeting with the owner of the house we liked, but couldn't make it. we just went to visit another one, which we didn't like particularly, so we decided to stick with the one we already applied for. cross your fingers for us, guys and girls. We'll let you know more later on!!!

Wish I was like him?

The NY Times has an article about Terence Tao, probably the most gifted mathematician of this generation. At age two, he knew hot to read and count. At seven, he was tackling calculus, At 20, he had a PhD. So, do I wish i was him? Uhm, I don't know. He himself admits he wasn't perfect in all fields, getting frustrated when asked to write essays, for example. Also he does not know any language other than english, from what he says: he certainly is excellent in his own fields, far more than I'll ever be in my own (whichever that is). Still, I would not exchange my place with his. better for both I guess. I am sure he would not enjoy to be a still running PhD at the age of 32 :-D - that, and I am better looking ;-)

Jon move up come on, I can't wait for ever to get that damn title. One more year and I will give up science and transfer to organised crime. Much more fun, and safer occupation.

Nietzsche

Un nuovo blog da leggere - in Italiano. Non son sicuro dello stile che l'autore usa. non capisco se vive a cavallo fra gerusalemme, tokyo e NY. o magari in un paesino della bassa padana. mah... importa poco. xo' sembra avere una maniera originale di pensare. x cui ve lo link, dategli uno sguardo. ;-)

Parasites, parasites...

I've managed to complete a few chapters of my copy of Parasite Rex. Incredibly interesting, more so since Carl Zimmer does freely update on the state of parasitology research on his blog. Yesterday, for example, with an interesting piece about the evolution of human crabs (piattole) and lices (pidocchi). (trackback)

Happy women's day

as per topic. something like a hundred+ years ago a bunch of women died in a fire... here you can get the whole story.

Women of all the world, get this digital bunch of flower from me:

The mistery of the vanishing honeybees

you may not know it, but honeybees do provide an incredibly important service to us - other than honey, that is. In fact, much more important than honey. They do pollinate the vast majority of crops, to the point that one out of every three bites we take would not be there if it wasn't for them.

Oh, I'm sorry I wiash I could write more on the foolishness of marketing and moving around bees as if they were people, on the crazyness of instituting no-fly- zones for bees to avoid them pollinating citruses and so obtain seedless clementine (!), and other americanities (but I am pretty sure the rest of the world has similar practices. I just don't have the time, so go and read the NY Times piece.

new pictures

linked on the sidebar...

for your education, they were taken in Platamona, during the second day of my sardinian holidays last september...

click on the slideshow botton to see the slideshow (duh!) with my comments too...

they only need to add some nice transitions, and some background music to Picasa to make a complete slideshow...

Vanishing forests

Carl Zimmer, the author of Parasite rex, has a piece on the NY Times regarding the Tanzanian Eastern Mountain Arc, where the surviving patches of forest, encroached by human development, contains an enormous quantity of species to be still discovered. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there will be time enough for biologist to even describe the species before they are driven to extinction, let alone make efforts to preserve them.

This all development business makes me sad. When people all over the world will understand that your success is not measured by how many children you have but how well you can rear them? Most people still behave as if we were hunter gatherers, sparse on an enormous territory and barely able to leave a dent on it, whereas this is not obviously the case anymore. And hasn't been for the past three hundred years to say the least.

I understand the need for providing means for a decent life to all the people alive on the planet right now, I do understand their strong will of having descendant.
I do also concede that they are entitled to the same level of life that we westerners enjoy. pity that the world can't cope with this all.

It's just OUR problem. If we mess up the environment, we will not wipe out life from the planet. Life is tough and in a couple of million years will be able to recover from it. may be more, but it will no doubt on this. But we are a fragile species, and our very same advanced society relies on a stable environment to prosper. Exactly the thing we are messing with. Good luck to us all.

Thoughts from Kansas has a comment on the article too.

PARASITE REX

I've finally received this book in my mailbox. I did order it after Dr Tatiana's Sex Advices to All Creation, but that one got lost in the post, so I had to notify Play.Com of this and have a replacement copy sent. They rocks!!! So much better than even Amazon (no link for them, eh eh).

Anyway, now it's here, in all the splendor of his colored scansion-micrography cover art. And God it's disgusting!!! I've only managed to read the preface in a quick sto at the loo after lunch, and yet I was captured, and revolted too - never mind the situation I was in, sitting on the company's WC, but reading about the effect of Tripanosoms or even worse, Onchocerca Volvulus, really scares the shit out of me. Luckily, as I said, I was already ibn a good sitting position. Did I mention that the author, Carl Zimmer, has a very nice blog called The Loom? He also writes for the NY Times, and National Geographic, but also Forbes. ;-)

Well, I guess I'll know what to read tonight, since I forgot at my gf's place :-(
Good Omens and Culture Matters (which was lent to me by her brother)

You all, have a nice evening!

Being a PostDoc

I feel morally obliged to post a link to the second Postdoc Carnival.

I've read a handful of post from there today, and I find strange how most of the post-doc posting are seeing their temporary research as a way to enter Academia - I, on the converse have accepted an industrial PostDoc as a way to stick my foot inside industry. Otherwise, the situation we PostDoGs feel here is pretty much the same, as far as frustration are concerned. Thankfully though, I'm part of a glorified trio of PostDoc involved in science-only, rather than being glorified technicians in the labs like some other complain.

Tribute to Carl Sagan

thanks to Coturnix

California Scientists Map God Genome

from AvantNews

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor
Davis, CA, July 22, 2010

Researchers at California's UC Davis announced today the successful completion of a three-year, highly secretive project to map God's genetic code. Originally commissioned by filmmaker James Cameron, who supplied the research team with holy genetic material on which to perform the study, the results of the God Genome project are expected to profoundly influence human conceptions of divinity and origin.

Amazing!!!

There's more than one tool user on this planet. that much we knew. chimp abitually use sticky sticks to eat Termites... (edit: the list of users of toolw is apparently quite long and includes not only primates, but even birds such as owls, and crows)

But actively hunting??? With spears? Made from branches sharpened with their teeth? That is unheard of!!!

I am sorry for all the exclamation marks!!! here's a link to the pre-print of the paper, from Current Biology website. Enjoy!

Up! Darren Naish has something to say too. I usually listen to him...

Scramble!!!

Yesterday, I heard, then saw, two fighter planes flying low over our buildings. No, I didn't think Pfizer or GSK had launched a pre-emptive strike against J&J. But since I just caugh a glimpse of them, I coudln't identify them properly. So went looking for what kind of planes does the Belgian (or alternatively, the Dutch) Air force uses. I found the answer in this nice and accurate website, where lots of detailed info on which armed forces and government corps have planes and copters in service are freely available (albeit not easily found). Kudos!

Food for the brain... and the body too...

Carl Zimmer points out an interesting review on Nature Reviews Cancer - abstract follows:

Darwinian medicine: a case for cancer

Mel Greaves

Epidemiological, genetic and molecular biological studies have collectively provided us with a rich source of data that underpins our current understanding of the aetiology and molecular pathogenesis of cancer. But this perspective focuses on proximate mechanisms, and does not provide an adequate explanation for the prevalence of tumours and cancer in animal species or what seems to be the striking vulnerability of Homo sapiens. The central precept of Darwinian medicine is that vulnerability to cancer, and other major diseases, arises at least in part as a consequence of the 'design' limitations, compromises and trade-offs that characterize evolutionary processes.

te last two sentences (about human vulnerability to cancer and Zimmer comments on genomic conflicts (Some important cancer genes appear to have rapidly evolved because they help sperm reproduce faster or allow fetuses to manipulate their mothers. It appears that these genes also make tumors more sucessful.) got me thinking...

So, we're more susceptible than normal to cancer because we've been evolving quicker than normal in the recent past? If so, when did this start? Since our environment has been kind of stable in the last thousands of year (ok, ice ages apart), is our evolution accelerating as a response to the increased demands of our social environment? So, is our evolution accelerating exponentially to follow the accumulation of knowledge (which certainly seems to be exponential)?

Uhm, lots of food for thought here.. have a nice evening...

gotta cook some pasta - otherwise my brain will run out of his preferred food :-)

Good Life

This show is incredibly good (ah! ah!). I've managed to watch the first two episodes only (download is kinda slow). However, I have to admit that I find it hard to follow. Either they used to speak quicker at that time, or the audio isn't that great. I guess it's the second. The alternative would be that I'm getting more used to the US accent, and less to the UK one. God not...

Anyway, I didn't have that much difficulties with the second episode. May be it was just matter of getting used to the actors' voices.


And I confirm my impression: Barbara Good (Felicity Kendall) is gorgeous! I've always liked her since when I first saw the show... The sheer power of her optimism it's just heart warming...

Good Omens

And, since I've named one of the authors in the previous post, I want to tell you what I am reading. Good Omens, or The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Neil gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

This was the first book I bought in english land, and had to wait one year or so before being able to read it. Now it's been five year since i last read it, so i don't remember much about it, other than the joke about the M25 (the London Ring) being a kind of satanic mandala / prayer wheel...

So, I've started reading again, since my latest purchases from play.com are lost somewhere between Jersey and Beerse.

God this book is funny. Thankfully, the class of Gaiman tempers down Pratchett's jokes so that they don't bore me after a while. When is a movie about this due?

Unfortunately, as wikipedia says: A film, directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned, but as of 2006 seems to have come to nothing. Funding was slow to appear and Gilliam moved on to other projects. The film has been removed from IMDB. Johnny Depp was originally cast as Anthony Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale. According to an interview in May 2006 at the Guardian Hay Festival, Gilliam is apparently still hoping to go ahead with the film.

Good Movies...

I've seen these two movies, the last two days. both were quite good.
Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes 500 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

I loved this one. The plot starts today, when intelligent people think twice before making a baby, whereas the mother of stoopids is always pregnant, as P.T. Barnum once put it. With technology to pamper humanity from natural selection, quickly stupids outbred the (not so uh?) smarts. resulting in a civilisation (?) where everybody drinks Gatorade (also plants) and speaks a pidgin english made-up from ghetto-jargon. The highest form of expression is a movie consisting exclusively of ninty minutes of fart scenes (ouch). Our unwilling hero, now the smartest person alive, is forced to take care of this unbearable situation...

Pity the movie did only concentrate on the United States of Uhmerica.

Possibly, other countries did escape this terrible fate?

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An IRS auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death.

This is a less accomplished movie, with some better acting but less fun. Will ferrel shows that he can be a little bit serious, and I loved Emma Thompson's character. Dustin hoffman's was instead a bit off, his talking not quite the ones I would expect from, you know, a literature scholar. In essence, the movie fall short of being truly Literary. the love story between the auditor and the bakery's girl is too simplified, as are many other of the plot's keystones. Pity, 'cause the initial idea was quite nice. I guess they should have called some better writer :-|

I can think of an english name for this kind of plot... (Neil Gaiman)

Singularity

Nice tidbits of info in this YouTube presentation


frankly, I'm not so sure about all the data shown in the video. Regardless, it makes some interesting insights.

wrong wrong wrong...

the NY Times stick his foot in it...

"Pro Evolution Soccer, a popular soccer game produced by Electronic Arts." wrong wrong wrong, PES is made by Konami. I just had to say it to someone :-) I know you don't care... :-|

The Departed

So, yesterday I almost forced my GF to watch this movie, which had been setting top of my list since last week. What can I say? very very nice movie, although I admit that I may have missed some nuances of the plot and dialogues. Sharp and hard on all accounts, it eaves you hoping until the end that things will turn for the better, but no, they just go down to hell... It's nice to get an american movie without the feel-good Hollywood ending, from time to time...

So, did it deserve the 4 oscars? I don't know - Martin Scorses was long due for one, sure... Best writing, probably yes. I liked the idea - the symmetric play remindimg me of a chess game, where every opponent has the same pieces and the same likelihood of victory (at least, thisi is what I believe in my ignorance). Bes Editing, most likely, although haven't had the time to check the other nominated for this. But as I said, it's sharp, with no unnecessary scenes. Best movie? It certainly is a good one. I voted it a 9 on the imdb - very good but not perfect - not one of those movies which win your heart. Well, not mine.

But I'd suggest anybody to watch it - that is, anybody who doesn't mind seeing some ten brain splattered on walls.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Oh yes, I also saw The Pursuit of Happyness this weekend - my girlfriend choice :-P

Nothing special. Will Smith as usual (plus one son). American dream as usual (crap-effort-success!). Happy Ending (but were's the wife? Did he take her back? did he marry a beautiful actress that the boy will hate for the rest of his life? Will the two fight for the inheritance of Will's fortune? - Pah...

The Osteodensity machine sucked, though... And the rubik cube scene too...

Mind you, an enjoyable movie, but will forget it within the month. time filler. My vote on IMDB: 6 - Avg User rating 7.4

Good for a laugh...

I know, I'm late for the party, but will give it a link anyway.

Since wikipedia is apparently too biased, they build their own - surely unbiased, just look up the name... Conservapedia... How this people can hope to pull something like this? May be it's just a prank. Nope. Sadness...

The Sinhas at Nr 43

or the Kumars at Nr 42?

Last weekend I spent it with an indian colleague and family in a chalet in the Ardennes. I realised when I arrived that the flat number was 43. just one number off the famous 42, which main character Sanjeev chose because of the Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

What a coincidence, uh? I wonder if there's any deeper meaning...

Disintoxication...

...from Battlestar Galactica :-)

Two weeks without it. more in fact. and I am not feeling the lack of it :-)

I'm going to celebrate buying or downloading "The Good Life", a BBC series which I adored when I was in the UK, where it's constantly re-aired...

Belgian Police sucks

There's no other way of putting it. they must sucks socks...

I was notified a speeding ticket (for a whopping 200 EUR!!!) three months late, may be 'cause it was done on a rental car - and the company, not me, rented the car. so i could have understood if they had had a bit of difficulties to trace me, back then. Anyway, I paid as soon as I got it. and forgot about it.

Last month, i get a call from a secretary or like at the company, telling me that the police is asking them the money (again!!!) and they'll pay and detract it from my salary. I look for the receipt in the online bank service, print it out and send it to them, they say OK it's all fine now. Sod the police.

Now, a policeman phones me up telling me that he absolutely has to talk to me regarding this. they want another copy of the receipt - but I'm pretty sure the belgian government would rather have me pay another time - not a chance in hell - unless this is a new fine - But I seriously doubt it... pof!!!

I hate this place!!!

No wonder French and Dutch make jokes on Belgian being kinda thick... We in Italy make jokes about the policemen bein particularly 'unclever'... may be the union of the two things (a belgian policeman!!!) is the archetype of thickness? mah...

Anyway. I decided to get rid of my car. I know I haven't had it for one year. But I think it's rather pointless to keep it. If I move, and commute by train, it'll stay at home al week long. I will not need it in the weekends since my girflriend will live with me, and we;ll go together to places... so what's the point of paying 400 euros per month? they would be better spent in food, holidays, gadgets. or may be a cradle, in one year's time. who knows, a baby may be on his/her way here from god-knows-where-babies-come-from... ;-)

I've run out of space...

On my hard drives (both). External and Internal. So, no more downloads until I get paid, and can afford a shiny new one, or at least a pack of DVDs... pants!!!

on the BloodBrainBarrier

Just today I started working on BBB, or Blood Brain Barrier - and here comes a post from Omics quickly explaining how it works (so that I don't have to) and why Avastin, an antibody avoiding vascular growth which would otherwise feed the tumor, may be able to cross the barrier even if usually antibodies aren't allowed in the Sancta Sanctorum of the human body, the brain - which has its own immune system, apparently.

So, the trick (may be) that the brain tumor itself seems to impair the BBB functionality, so that avastin can slip through... and kill it. Kind of a burglar which leaves open the door of the apartment he's robbing, only to be surprised by a policeman who got curious about the open door. But why does the BBB give in where a brain tumor is growing? Apparently, this may have to do with the fact that the tumor needs to be fed by new capillaries, and for growing this the tight junctions have to be disassembled. Tough chance for the tumor. Good for us, and some hope for those patients who may, one day be saved.

Counterfeiting drugs...

Yesterday's NY Times has a piece on the plague of counterfeited drugs in Asia (and Africa, too). Watch out for those miracle antimalarial - the technique counterfeiters are adopting are quite sophisticate using not only placebos but sometimes active ingredients which 'simulate' the presence of the real drug, or even adding a lil bit of it, just enough to fool fake-detection methods - a practice which could pose an even serious threat, since giving low doses of a strong active is the best way to engender resistance to it.

Damn these bastards. I hope that one day they'll need the very same drugs, and will discover that what they bought was... fake!
But it will not bring back to life person who died at their hands...

As the article points out, a counterfeit alarm system is in place, but without incentives is hardly used.

I am moving

Ehy. I did it. I finally gave notice to my landlady (and her vampyr minion, her housing-agent - pretty lady who sucks my blood) that by May I'll leave the apartment, to tranfer with my girlfriend Marie in Mechelen, or Malines, for the francophones.



I already posted about this nice city, close enough to Brussel so that she'll be able to commute easily, and may be we'll be able to enjoy the nightlife (yeah, right). At the same time, I hope that I'll be able to catch the hourly direct train to Turnhout to come to work. And in the future, since it's so central to Belgium, we may stick there whatever our workplace. let's hope so... It looks very nice.

The life of tapeworms

Carl Zimmer, who's a knack for parasitology, has an interesting piece about the evolution of tapeworms, commonly known in Italy with their latin name: Taenia.

Also, a nice picture of their evolutionary tree (from the original paper)

So, what?

Audible Magic is selling a software which allows copyright holders to check whether or not someone has uploaded any of their stuff on youtube. So what? do they think they're going to stop people from downloading?

In fact the program is quite easy to fool. Just crop the image. Uhm don't like it, really, I would miss part of the movie. but I have another solution, in fact: juist split the picture in quarters, and scramble them. it isn't going to affect too much the encoding, rebuilding the picture will be easy for players - and I bet their software can't cope wth it. Of course, you'll need to store info on the file somewhere, so that they could still do their trick. and that may be an hassle for people who are used to downloading quickly. still, companies can't play catch and run for ever...

when will they get round the fact that their business model is broken and they've to look for another one? I mean, is it that difficult to ask advertising buyers to pay directly for the production of series and stuff with embedded ads? how can they not see this???

They shot a Robin into Space!!!

Ehy I'm back, after a long lapse due to the weekend in the Ardennes (which has not gone as planned unfortunately - worst than you may think, since the weather was ideal for a long walk in the forest which we were denied by adverse conditions - gr!

Anyway, bak home yesterday, I've seen the latest episode of TopGear: s09e03, for those interested (click on the link to download the torrent :-) ). And, apart from the usual Clarkson's trashing around in an expensive and hyper powered car, the highlight was the attempt of building a no-nonsense, down-to-earth (in all senses) space shuttle from a Reliant Robin (picture below) on the impeccable rationale that it's cheap, and being pointy it already resemble a spaceship.



as you can see, plenty of people think it's suited to become many different things :-)

Anyway, they asked (once again) the help of the Rocketeers, a rocket-fan-club somewhere in England, borrowed a wind tunnel from some University, testing grounds from the Royal Army, and went down there to assemble the whole shebang.

And it did work!!! well, almost... It did lift-off beautifully, with the solid booster detaching themselves at the right moment, just like in the REAL space shuttle, it did turn belly-up to insert into orbit (ah!), but then the explosive bolts supposed to separate the big rocket didn't work out, so that instead of flying down to the grass it tumbled and exploded, leaving a big hole somewhere in northumberland, just off the A68. Well, it was fun!!!



Anyway, here you can check out the whole assembly and stuff. ;-)

Novaya Zemlya

I'm sad. In my absolute ignorance of geography, I just discovered this island, well, this archipelago of two big ones plus a host of small ones. It sits above siberia or there, and reminded me of the place where Stephen Baxter, in his book Behemoth, set his Mammoth stories. In his north siberian island, almost unexplored by humans with the exception of the southernmost part, which hosted a Soviet Air Force base during the cold War, a colony of mammoths manages to survive until our days. The story, mammoths excluded, parallels that of Novaya Zemlya, with another important exception. This site, since the end of the second world war until 1990, has been the main soviet site for nuclear testing, both atmospherical and subterranean. Reading wikipedia, one understands that roughly 70% of his enormous territory has been hit one way or another, by some of the 224 nuclear explosions, for a total of 265MTons. the largest Fusion bomb ever made, the Tsar Bomb (50Mton!!!) was detonated here. What a firecracker!!!

Now I don't think that there were any mammoths left there, since the human inuit-like population would have gotten rid of them much before the rise of western civilisation. But still, when I saw it on google maps I imagined it like an uncontaminated land... Kind of like Kamchatka, which instead, I read, thanks to the very strong military servitude imposed on it has been saved by exploitation of its resources, and is now the main and one of the few refuges of the pacific salmon (I read it on the NY Times some time ago, I think). As a general rule, I think that military servitudes (as they're called in Italy often have the very good side effect of protecting the nature in the training grounds. It holds true for the scottish highlands, for Kamchatka but also for some places in sardinia too. I'm pretty sure that similar examples can be found in the US too. Military exercises are very limited in time, and although they can be disruptive of the natural order at those times, ensure that the forest will be left undisturbed for most of the year, without noisy tourists to soil it.

But then again, one thing is having a tank strolling around for a couple of day, may be even some planes dropping some couple of tons of bombs, or disseminating even depleted uranium projectiles. nature can cope with this... But MegaTon bombs? Radioactive fallout? I don't think so... Do you?

Busy Busy Busy again... then nothing.

Just spent two hours putting together a presentation on the last two-weeks worth of work, one hour showing it, another one listening to my two co-post-dogs, then lunch... a short walk in the sun and that's it.

a few hours left before our dear friend/colleague is treated to a welcome party. then possibly swimming pool, or may be I'll feel guilty and head off home for a final rehashing of my thesis pictures.

Find it boring? well, story of my life...

let's put up a picture to spice up this post


A schematic of the way I plan to screen my pKas... yes it looks pretty enough... a detail of the central seelction in the next one.

Heavy news day this one...

On the heels of the Nowak affair, and right in time for valentine's Day, the NYTimes has a piece regarding the misdemeanor of famous (and not so) scientist of this and the past century...

I didn't know that Schrodinger was such a womanizer... ;-)

Google gets a slap on the wrist...

NY Times reports that the brussel court ruled Google guilty of infringing copyright for linking to articles of belgian newspapers.

I do not agree with the court, however. Google is linking freely available stuff, which is exactly what it does in any case. It is not bypassing any firewall or offering premium content for free.

If I were Google, I'd cancel them from the face of the web. See how much trafic goes to those newspapers website once every search in the major engines returns links to the competitors.

Happy Valentine's day!!!

LOL Happy valentine's day...


My lovely marie is busy at work this night, so no romantic dinner - in fact, we will not even meet. (sad sad luca - there seems to be a curse on my valentines)

Anyway, I bought her a present. A book. Well Ok may be she will not appreciate but I'm going to enjoy. So may be it's a present for me... uh...

Anyway, here it is:

And there's more!!!

I'd like an Octopus and Peach cone, thank you very much!!!

click on the title (or here) to go to the original page

Yummi!!! Tasty Cookie...

Thanks to PZ Myers for these mo'fa'kin' spiders on a mo'fa'kin cookie...

And Oh, this is just too great!!!

The largest bit-torrent site around has launched an incredibly good initiative. Torrents linking to the oscar-nominated movies, so that you can download them and express your opinion.

I think it's rather nice, indeed. Just what I need to grab a couple movies for this weekend in the Ardennes

And you know what i think about p2p, pirates all this stuff. the world has changed. MPAA and RIAA complaining now instead of adapting to the new reality is like the horses's stable suing FORD for mass-producing cars. Get a (new) life... be creative and ask someone to sponsor your movie, so that you can distribute it with spots embedded. there's no need for middlemen (distribution houses) anymore.

Now, what?

Study: P2P effect on legal music sales "not statistically distinguishable from zero"

Take this, RIAA/MPAA!!!

sorry for ripping through without commenting but I'm off for lunch. may be later I'll update.

eccomi qua: will quote the article from ars technica: A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

So, it's not ome bonker's (or lawyer's) study, but one peer-reviewed within a respectable journal. This confirms my idea. Those who download music either would not buy it in first place, or do it to sample at their own ease something before actually purchasing. If anything, pirated music does increase the awareness that something new has come out, exactly as radio broadcast does. The industry should be giving away the songs in radio-quality files, for exactly the same reasons.

And again on the matter of diets

I did post recently about my most beloved american gardener / journalist, Michael Pollan - author of "The Botany of Desire", which I loved, and "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which I'm going to.

Now, an article on the Guardian debunks the scientific credibility of 'Dr' Gillian McKeith, who's been abusing the PhD title, which she apparently got from a mail-university in the US or somewhere else. I didn't know i could get one like this, Stupid me for wasting years in research and half the evenings of the last year in writing a thesis. Pants!!! Why I'm not so clever as this PhD people?

On a pleasant side note, I've worked on the pictures and tables of the sixth chapter y/day. Hopefully that chapter is now FINAL (pending judgement of the external examiner). Tonight for the seventh, and may be by the end of the week i'll get to re-write better conclusions. Ah, how sweet is to see the end in sight...

After this is done, i'll be able to concentrate on... writing writing and publishing publishing this work before it's superseded and obsolete by other people.

And I'll have to do the same at work too. Well, my Word proficiency is now up to the job, I should be able to manage it. :-)

Do I have the time?

for a quick post? yes I do...

things to do today:

training. downloading the latest episodes of: Top Gear, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica. Oh, yes, write up the thesis since my ex-spervisor doesn't seem to be busy with it. At least it'll have less to correct.

cheers... gotta go to training, now.

Unhappy Meal

This really deserves a link. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, takes on the confusion which grips most americans when it comes to food. He starts from the beginning of the '50s and shows how food industry and (bad) journalism have changed the perception of what is good to be eaten.

He focuses mostly on americans, but unfortunately I can see the same thing happening in Italy, notwithstanding the claim that our food is proper food and probably the best balanced diet in the whole world.

Shame on me, in the past few days I ate so many mini-mars-bars... :-(

Amarone, californian wines..

The NY Times has a piece regarding the Amarone, a wine made from dired grapes which has a very strpng alcohol content - in italian, we call them 'passiti'. The article boasts about californian wines having 17 degrees, but they're just weak if compared to other passiti, italian and not.

Anghelu Ruju, from Sardinia, for example, or Mavrodaphne from Greece, although this last one isn't technically a passito.

Oldest people on Earth...

Here's the hand of a 102 years old sardinian woman, Rosa Frau - nothing to do with germans, have no idea why but Frau is quite a common surname in Sardinia.

Anyway, the picture introduces the subject of the post, which is that we sardinian are one the populations on earth with the most ultra-centenaries, i.e. people with 100 years or more. I personally know a friend who's grandma is now 103 or so, and still kicking ass...

As far as I know, we do share this primate with Kazakhstan, a region where like Sardinia people have a very peculiar diet, which would probably starve to death the average american. or me, for that matter. There's a lot of indications in the scientific literature that a reduced-calories diet may increase your life span... Pity that I love eating... I try to keep my weight and fat percentage under control of course, but I can hardly say that I am doing it for having a longer life.

Uhm, I think i lost my thread... where the hell did I want to bring this post?

see? too much food makes you dumb....

update: nice link on (certified) ultracentenaires - which apparently dispels my previous knowledges. But hey, I'm a scientist, I don't mind changing my mind.

What a shame...

I was looking for info regarding the fact that sardinia and kazalhstan share the oldest populations on earth (I will post about this later on), and came across this Unesco page about the Island of Asinara.

Pity it isn't properly translated, and they didn't even get the name right.

Too Little, Too Late?

What's the point in having a web page today, wehen you have a blog? I don't know. But here it is.

May be it'll come in handy when I want to put up a new CV?

I know where you've been last summer

and the previous winter... and the summer before...

Well, I know if you're a girl or a man with long hair. Otherwise I don't.

Ever seen Point Break? the police find out that the bankrobbers must be surfers from the heavy metal content of their hair, pointing to a polluted beach.

Now canadian police is taking the thing further. "When you eat and drink, the isotopes from the water are incorporated into the core of your hair strand, and that isn't changed by bleaching or dying your hair. It remains consistent. It's like a record of your movement," she said. "By taking the hair from the root, we can travel back in time through that person's travel history."
Isn't this incredibly cool?

I guess it's not going to work with men who shave their heads. unless a pretty undercover agent slips into their bed and manages to retrieve some pubic hair.

And there's another problem I can foresee. namely that most people in the western world eat food and drink water produced some thousand of km away. I mean, checking my drawers, the garlic comes from china, the onion from New Zealand, the oranges from Spain and Sicily, the sausages from Sardinia. How will they cope with it?

thanks to the forensic science blog for the heads-up. Way better than any CSI fudge technique.

Let's try Post2Blog

Let's try this new software (Post2Blog). It should automagically allow me to post a pre-formatted entry to the Owl's Hide.

With automagic image placing and upload!!!

(which doesn't seem to work, though - let's try w/o piccies)

So let's try!!!

Oh forget it this thing is so crap that even cutting and pasting it in blogspot still would not take the piccie. Pants! Immediate Uninstall!!!

Cant's stop the signal...

That's Serenity's tagline, I know... But I'm writing this post just to inform you that, yet again, can't finish the 13th episode opf BSG. I just can't. I started it. But there's no way... I got to the point where Atena and Helo have a meaningless discussion, then one of them shoot the other. So lame.

I can't even start watching again Ally McBeal, since Billy died. I am too afraid of such a big change... or may be I'm afraid that nothing will change for the people in the firm... mah...

But I still have some episodes left of The future is Wild, thank God (thanking someone who doesn't exist doesn't really help, uh?) Anyway, this series is just great. Although the ecosystems presented are somehow too simplified... No background noise, if I can make myself clear. It looks like every region only hosts 3 to 4 animals. and a bunch of plants to provide a nice backdrop.

And as I said, the plant's evolution is grossly underestimated. Still, as good as any BBC "The world of..." series.

Now, I wonder...

Scientists at University of Yale have shown that chains assembled from beta amino-acids, instead than alpha as the one our proteins are built from, can show similar properties.

Frankly, the fact does not strike me as a particularly impressive discovery... But I wonder... what if we were to insert this kind of stuff in our body? Would we be able to create novel enzymes able to act on our own biochemical make-up? Would our enzymes be able to work on it? Now, that would be something... here follows the abstract.

thanks to Coturnix for pointing this out.

High-Resolution Structure of a beta-Peptide Bundle

Douglas S. Daniels, E. James Petersson, Jade X. Qiu, and Alanna Schepartz*

Departments of Chemistry and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8107

alanna.schepartz@yale.edu

Received December 4, 2006

Abstract:

We recently reported that beta-peptides can form discrete hetero-oligomers in aqueous solution. Here we describe the structure of such an oligomer as determined by X-ray crystallography. The structure of Zwit-1F reveals a homo-octamer of two cupped "hands" composed of both parallel and antiparallel 3₁₄-helices. The core of the assembly is composed entirely of solvent-excluded beta³-homoleucine residues. The Zwit-1F assembly shares many of the physical characteristics of natural proteins.

Conservation?

My Girlfriend kind of shocked me when she told me that the lions in the Rwanda's National Park were killed by shepherd who didn't want the big cats to hunt on the cows, illegally present in the park itself... This is the only link I can find regarding the things or some thing similar... You would think OK, this is Africa so you can't expect people to be reasonable about conservation when they need to feed their children...

But how about the rich US? First in the world they established a national Park, Yellowstone. And now they're taking it down piece by piece... Until 2000, snowmobiles were free to roam inside the park, disturbing animals, but also ruining the experience of more quiet human visitors. Measures to regulate and control the access were put in place, but have been the object of various reversal at the hand of local business and generally Bush-appointed administrators. Now they're trying to triple the number of snowmobiles allowed per day...
Tutto il mondo e' paese, we say in Italy. All the world is the same... Shame.

Children aren't stupid.

Not even creationist children - this comment comes from pandagon.net:

Zog showed his 7th and 8th grade parochial school students An Inconvenient Truth. There was a rather heated discussion, where one of his parochial school students openly questioned that God would ever let such a thing happen to us. Before he could sort an appropriate answer through his atheistic brain, the other students took over with a bunch of “What about Noah! Duuuhhhh!”.

Even within their religious frame, these kids had their bullshit detectors on.

Ripp It After Me!!!

Nice utility to manage codec, and easily convert between video/audio file formats. Completely free (as in beer) - as far as I understand it's just a wrapper of codecs and programs such as xvid, vdub and so on...

be aware that it will require some space on the harddrive when working with temporary files.

Clever Genetic Programming

Here's a clever Java applte written by Lee Graham which graphically shows the evolution of a series of strings... incredibly well done, I wish I had done it in fact... excellent screensaver, if you can mnage to run it off-line.

run it and see the genes while they're crossed, mutated, inserted and deleted from/to the string/chromosomes... (rules here)

also great in graham's site is the origin codes, a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the bible codes.

thanks to PZ Myers for pointing this out!!!

So, now it's 90% true...

Are we going to do something about it? I thinl not.

Sadly, but "very likely" true, Jeremy Clarkson is right when he says that rather than discussing on how to stop Global Warming, we better focus on trying to solve the problems it will cause. in his words: I am also fearful that unless we stop thinking of ways to prevent global warming, and start to address the problems it will cause when it gets here, our children are going to finish their days in an overcrowded, superheated vision of hell.

But I just don't see China and the US willing to cut down on their economies to avoid the looming disaster. Not that we europeans are withut fault. after ll, we buy stuff from china and pretend low prices, all of which drives their environmentally unfriendly economy.

Pessimism and depression only, on this blog - I'm disilluded... As a species, we could have achieved so much, instead we are squandering the family fortunes and ruining the very same shop which keeps us live. Hopefully, the next species up will do better...

Billy is dead... :-(

I am probably some five years late here... but hey...

I was watching an episode of Ally McBeal, and billy just died. in two episodes, he discovered a brain tumor (in his ass apparently), then he just died for a massive brain hemorrage (again in his ass, which would qualify them as hemorroids too, I guess).

Pretty sad episode. It almost made me cry... the idea of losing someone you REALLY love has a great effect on me... That LOSS sensation, the fact that you realise you'll never be able to talk to him/her again... It's hard to cope with, for us... :-|

Enough sadness now. It's almost the weekend, I've taken half-a-day off so that I can rush down to Ardennes (almost there, Anthisnes).



There (where the arrow points to) I'll meet my girlfriend's family for a reunion and a dinner. where as far as I understand I'll have to prepare something. Pasta with Bottarga, I guess. what else? (NB: I make it differently than in the recipe linked.)

The best things in life are free...

so is Google Reader. Finally I'll be able to read my most preferred websites from only one page. I'll immediately see if one of them has been updated. Instead of having to check them out one by one. Now the question is: will I spend less time in pointless exploration, or will I drown in trying to read them all? mah... who knows? but sure it's cool!

(and don't come to me saying that there's other and better rss-feeders-whatever around. this one comes from google so sits nicely between my gcalendar (now with free sms!!!) and my gmail (which keeps getting better.)

oh, and hey, let's not forget that blogger is google now!!!

Asoka: here's a movie I liked

as per topic. I saw this movie at University, in Southampton. Pretty epic story. dion't remember much other than the main character had very big anger management issues...

Very long and lots of song and dances, indian beauties, and incredibly violent battles, for what I can remember. Aristotelic tragical ending.

Unfortunately, I can't find much in terms of pictures on the net.

here's the wikipedia page corresponding to the historical character upon which the movie is based.

I can't / I can't I / can't stand watching...

Battlestar galactica anymore. The last two episodes have been sitting on my harddrive without me even pretending to care about them. bah... let's face it, "The Future is Wild" is much more entertaining...

I mean, instead of cardboard spaceships looking for a silly planet whose inhabitants aren't even intelligent enough to remember they were part of a whole civilisation only three thousand years ago...

We have the tale of continents colliding over great lenghts of time, the closing of the mediterranean sea and its evaporation, the death of the life which it did harbor with the exception of few adaptable and ultra-specialised species. We follow the hundred-million-year-long voyage of Australia to collide with Japan; the analog travel northward of Antarctica and its blloming from frozen desert to temperate forest to tropical jungle, and the evolution and diversification of its few bird species in thousands new varieties each occupying its own special niche. We ave insects as big as hawks preying on small colibris descended from albatrosses, we have colibris who defend themselves spraying a noxious liquid the drink from a flower, and insect who mimic that flower so that they can trick the bird in getting closer to them just when he's defenseless. This is REAL science-fiction, where science plays the most prominent role, and not unlikely love-triangles between petty officers and fighter pilots. bah!!!

Booh! for Battlestar Galactica, Kudos! to "The future is wild"!!!

ps: I am not inhuman, mind you. I also did watch an episode of Ally Mcbeal, third series - that pretty much fulfill my need for unlikely romance :-)

new piccies on the side bar

My brother married last september, and I did scan some of the old-style piccies that my uncle/godfather shoot for the occasion. Funny though, I did only scan piccies with me or Marie in them, so there's no mention of Maria Grazia, bride. Anyway, they're in the sidebar.

The new market of exploit and viruses

I think I've heard many times the comparison between our computers and an ecosystem, where multiple species (programs) compete for CPU-time and other resources. Computer program have their viruses, too, which spread at the expenses of other programs, exploiting their vulnerabilities. Some viruses hide within the program itself, some other burrow within the file that other softwares 'eat' - an image, for example, and are able to get executed and do their own business thanks to so-called 'exploit', code snippets which exemplify the way of attacking said program, of exploiting one of its known weaknesses. But the situation goes beyond this, now. This weaknesses and the expliouits are usually found, by chance or intentionally, by users which untilam few years ago would receive from software giants like M$ very little, may be a hand shake, in the worst of cases they would be threatened with a court action if they were to disclose them. I hated this way of doing...

Now however, security experts and 'hackers' have become clever, and instead of disclosing the newfound holes do put them up for auction, where they are often snatched not only by security firms interested in letting their clinets know about it. Sometimes, the buyer is a criminal 'firm' intersted in actually exploiting the hole to plant in your PC some nasty spyware, to steal your credit card number or such.

pants!

but hey, I really believe that this situation has been created by the hostility of big companies (M$ in primis) towards hackers. By doing so they've alienated their simpatyes, and by driving them in the underground they're facilitating this clandestine market of information.

Gosh.

anyway, the NY Times has an interesting piece about it.

Levi's sues...

Over the shape of their trademark pockets.

No, seriously, since evreybody seems to be copying their 'seagulls' flying in a pentagon (see piccies on the left, courtesy of NY Times)

So this got me thinking about pockets... and what came up to my mind is something that only Italian of roughly my same age (or older) may remember. a n ad which caused scandal in catholic Italy, when it came out.











the brand, Jesus Jeans: the year, 1972. the piccie you can see below.



Nice huh? I english, the writing says: "Those who love me will follow me", jesus' words of course, with a twist. I'd certainly follow the lady wearing the jeans :-)

If you're reading, Marie, please forgive me :-P

The Gufo

ps; some of you may notice that it was two years before I would be born - never mind, I got hold of comics and magazines where this picture was shown at the time...

What Kind of Reader Am I?

hat Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.
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Notes to my future self

I've done it again. Before leaving work, on friday afternoon, I fill in a word page with some notes on ToDo points for today... They seemed perfectly understandable then... But now? Not a chance in Hell... Cryptic like the freaking Da Vinci code.

I guess I'll have to get back from scratch. I hate mondays. they're good for blogging only :-(

Rocky Balboa

I've seen this movie. Not bad. but mostly, a movie made of self-quotations. From the scene of the stairs, to the training in the butchery, everything was there. they even self-quote the actors, since Rocky's new woman is a young girl that he brought home long time ago.
I understand the movie wasn't supposed to center about fights anymore, but the lack of a decent bad guy really did hurt the whole story. This Mason Dixon did look more like a failed rapper than anything else.

They could ahve at least twisted the plot by having rocky's woman son to part for his black brother, or something like it. Instead, everythign did flow predictably toward a fight which we know it was supposed to be epic... only it wasn't. No strategy, No suspense no nothing in fact. Just a bunch of fists to show that he's still the Italian Stallion. bah... 6.5 for the effort that old Silvester took in getting back into shape for the movie. His abs put the young guy to shame, really.

Some nice blogs

The Man in Blue speaks no-nonsense, about the culture of fear which grips the US (and others), and many varied things such as gravity, and social psychology.

and there's Street Anatomy, too... with some amazing medical pictures from all over the world. Click on the link to see more piccies.


Isn't this impressive? and believe me, I haven't posted the more shocking one!

Really, really wild!!!

I' ve just seen the first episode of "The future is wild" series. It looks very good indeed, and I hope the next episodes will be more detailed not only in the matter of animals, but also plants. I know that lots of animal evolution has been driven by plants (e.g., the special relationship which insect and vertebrates share with agiosperms, that is, flowering (and seeding) plants. I can't believe that the future wll reserve plants a passive observers' role. I do however understand that it is more difficult to forecast such breakthrough than incremental evolution of animals...

But I'm certainly looking forward to the following episodes...

As an aside, yesterday I've been to see Blood Diamonds at the Cinema (Bioscope, is the funny word flemish use for it). A nice movie, with a good and strong message to bring home. pity, though, that it caters to audience who doesn't really need to hear it. a bit like "An Inconvenient Truth" - only people who care about Global Warming are going to see it. the ones who really make up the problem do not give a rat's ass about it.

Same for diamonds. Girls who have been brainwashed to want a diamond will not certainly be stopped by Leonardo DiCaprio and the others who compose the merry brigade of this movie. Nor will the big heads of diamond commerce in Antwerp - actually, they started a PR campaing devote to limit the iage damage from this movie well before it came out. Sorry for the interspersed cynism. I'm just not really confident that we, as humans, are so good. hopefully, the hopping snails and the jungle octopodes from the future will do better, in 200 Million years time. All the best.

Three domains, or six reigns?

In the primary schools (or may be it was the secondary, I don't remember exactly), I was taught by my teacher that all living things belong to one of five different Reigns (or kingdoms - but without a king I guess). Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protists, Bacteria.


this is the oldest version with only three kingdom recognised at the time.

Bacteria are the oldest and the simplest, with the others being grouped under the collective label of Eucharyotes. I'm not going to dwelve in details here. check the wikipedia or your biology textbook for that.

Anyway, some time ago I came to know that in fact not all bacteria are born the same. Some of them, called Archeobacteria, do seems to be more rudimentary, yet they are though to have originated Eucharyotes as well.



the whole thing is quite confusing as other people say they are in fact unrelated, and they just sit on the same branch of the tree of life just because 'normal' bacteria are different from both of them.

If you feel like I've confused you, and would like to get clearer idea, here's where you should go. read the posts from the bottom up. cheers

It Snows!!!

I've been waiting for it for quite some time, now... for the moment, single snow crystals are falling down, may be by the end of the day we will see some decent fluffy snow falling down from the sky... I'm looking forward to it.

Well, not really. Tonight, in that case, I'll have to drive over the snow, a thing which I've never tried before. I hope it'll not be too bad. I'll keep you posted.

How much light?

Plants do convert carbon dioxide in glucose, by means of what is called Clorophillian Photosynthesis. This essentially means that they breath in carbon dioxide, and use the light energy to run a complicated series of molecular machines, called enzymes, which pick and mix CO2 (and water) molecules, take them apart and end up with glucose.

The waste oxygen freed is a powerful venom, so much so that the first great extinction did happen when the level of this toxyc gas in the atmosphere did raise too much, kiling off most of the life of the time, that was anaerobic - i.e., didn't use oxygen. Oh no. Not at all.

Luckyly, some bacteria did manage to use this opxygen to perform the opposite reaction, so that they could live off that waste. Probably at the beginning, it was a simple defense mechanism against this toxic gas, exactly as many bacteria can now take apart toxins which would otherwise accumulate within their body and kill them. It did end up however, as the primary energy production mean for these life forms, which now constitute the great majority of life on Earth. Who knows, may be one day some life form will evolve able to thrive on the mountains of toxic junk that we humans are creating. Think about the Toxic Jungle of Nausicaa of the Valley of The wind.

Anyway. I was told in the elementary school that plants only do this magic at day. At night, when there's no sun, they do consume parto fo that glucose exactly as other animals do. This keep them alive. It makes sense... at night there's no light, so they can't do Photosynthesis. To be fair, a certain amount of glucose burning, unless plants have another magic trick to directly use the energy of the sun to power their system, when this is available. I am not aware of this. So, it's glucose burning. Which produces the same waste as our ordinaryu burning of fossil fuels, i.e. those CO2 and H2O which the plants sequestrated in first place. But there's a big difference. Plants and animals have a molecular machinery able to perform this burning in small, controllated steps, so that they extract as much energy as they can from the fuel, storing it into molecules of ATP(Adenosin TriPhosphate), the Euro of the body. Any other energy currency has its ATP-equivalent. And any structure, large or small, has a more or less fixed price in ATP. Please pardon my euro-centricity, but i fell the euro better fit the role of universal currency as compared to the US$. The states composing the euro zone are much more different, like liver and heart and lungs. Yet, all these organs are built of the same kind of cells, tweaked to perform better in that environment. Fit to perform a particular role. Boph! Anyway.

I got sidetracked...

My initial curiosity was: light can now be always present in a plant's environment. How do they cope with it? do they take advantage of it, or they just shut their eyes at night and do without photosynthesis, even if there's a light bulb half a metre afar? A bit of both i believe. Forcing the cicradian cycle is bound to cause some stress. Some plants will adapt well, some other will not.

I know that Cannabis, for example does actually take full advantage of constant light - don't ask me how I know. I do. and no, I do not grow cannabis in my cellar. But cannabis plants are usually kept under very bright lights. I guess they would not mind growing on Mercury, if only we could send there a greenhouse with enough soil, water and air. Hell, it would probably manage without too. So, bright lights. I can't sleep with bright lights pointing just in front of me.
But if t=it's not too bright, I can sleep just fine. Do plants have a similar request? that is to say, is there any threshold (in lumen) under which a specific plant will not perform photosynthesis, and will instead switch completely to glucose catabolism? I have no freaking clue. Any suggestion is welcome. :-)

diary of a cold day...

You wake up in the morning. I mean, before it. kinda 5.30, 'cause your room's noisy heating started, and you crawl to the bathroom to turn it on there too. hate this old house. no double glazing and directly under-the-roof.
Cold as frozen hell.
uhm, I better pee before going back to bed. if only for half an hour. you never know.

...

vrrr... vrrr... piripi piripi beep vrrr... my mobile alarm... Zelda's catch a treasure ringtone from the other mobile, receiving an sms from google calendar to wake me up... bang them on the wall but one of them keep buzzing...

Ok I get it... get up and reach the microwave, with your eyes closed and a bottle in your hands.
I just hope it's milk, not the sardinian blueberry spirit. that wouldn't wake me up, not really.

mug, sugar, milk (or mirto), soluble coffee, chocolate powder. microwave for two'. drink. shower. no wait, first weight yourself, let's see if your body fat %age has changed thanks to those eight lanes in the swimming pool y/day. nope. not a chance.

never mind, quick shower and hunt for lean socks. cotton or wool t-shirt? It's cool in the house, just imagine what it must be outside. animals move, plants don't, I need to move so it's wool. two layers of it. three if you count the jacket. need a new one damn, one of those fancy new multi-coloured american-style kinda of rocky mountain trekker that my indian colleague appreciates. may be next weekend. if I get paid, that is.

OK. trainer shoes on, no I'm not gonna run but they're the most comfortable. sorry love, am not going to look smart and sharp today. too cold outside for my sardinian blood.

off we go... down the stairs (lazy, with the elevator - lift for you englishmen out there)

in the car. no wait! it's all frozen. uhm may be I want to scrape the ice from the windscreen? why cars don't come with automated functions for this? I mean, it happens regularly in half of the EU. how hard can it be to wire some wires (ouch!) in the front windscreen like in the back? never mind scrap scrap scrape, it's done.

jump into the car and rush to work... brr... freezing cold. why do I have to get here before seven? I don't know. that's life I suppose.

well never mind. let's try to start working before ten, for a change. see you later...

update: nice sunny day, although this pale fusion ball blazing up there can't warm up this place above freezing point. it's a miracle that life can survive in these conditions. I mean, i look at the grass outside the window, covered in sparkling ice crystals, and I know it's alive. isn't this wonderful?

Goodbye Blogspot?

What? are you leaving us, Darren? please dont tell me so... I really hope you're just moving over to Scienceblogs.com. Although I don't like their standard layout too much.
Or maybe you found a job and will not have time anymore for those long zoological posts? Pants!
Anyway, good luck.

I'll hunt for you on the i.net.

The Future is Wild

I did long time ago, buy a book which tried to depict how animals would evolve in the next 50MY. The logical premise was tha human would become extinct, something which I find rather likely. If ever there is some primate left, it is going to be rather different from us. Anyway.
The book was OK, but not great, pictures specially were kinda old-fashioned, like from a medieval bestiary. Animals didn't look quite right to me, and mostly were kludged, like trying to force a toad to look-like a rat. bah...

Now, I discovered they made a series inspired on it (just inspired). The future is Wild. It takes under exam three time points, 5, 100 and 200MY from now. It looks pretty interesting, so I'm going to give it a go. Either buy it if I can, or download it if I can't.

SCRUBS!!!

did I tell you that the sixth season of Scrubs is running? and do you know that the sixth episode is very very good, all sung in the mind of a patient? click here or the title to download it with bittorrent :-)

Converting movies for my phone

I've been spending the morning (and until now, in fact) playing with a nifty application named 3GP_converter, which uses ffmpeg and such to translate movies into a version readable by my sagem mobile. I've managed to get the video working beautifully, but the sound still gets lost in translation.
Pity. Anyway, I will try later on if I can find some hack able to do it. with Quicktime I can export the file, but most of the settings which should work (H.263 for the video, AMR-narrowband for audio) results in movies which even on the pc stop playing after a few seconds. pants!

Star Wars

All over again. The chinese have managed to shoot down one of their olsd weather satellites.

Frankly, I'm happy they did it. This way, they will have some more pull on bush's administration in getting them round a table to signa treaty to ban such weapons which, apparently, the US have been developing too, albeit enshrouded in secret.

I'm all for a civil conquest of space.

Free Shareware Software

I know, it seems like an oxymore, since you usually have to pay for shareware. Still, people at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ do actually give away one different (and useful) software every day. Until now, I did get a nice backup utility, an advanced text editor, and a software to compare similarity between images.

Can't say much about the backup utility, other than it seems to work OK at home, but not on the work computer. In this second case, the scheduler doesn't start the backup, although manual backup is still possible. It compresses to ZIP, which is a pain if I want to recover only one file, although may be there's the option of only extracting the file I want to recover (through winzip I imagine).

The ImageComparer works very nicely, although it is trigger happy and flags as likely identical pictures shot in the same location: e.g., a picture of mine in front of brussel's Atomium, and one of Marie taken two minutes later in the very same spot.

Haven't tried much of the gridinsoft editor, although I have seen that his regular expression engine does not recognise \t as a tab (!) - hopefully, though, his sorting abilities maty mean that I'll miss a bit less the wonderful unix utilities such as sort, awk, grep. never mind, it can only sort alphabetically the lines, not based for example on single columns - bash scripting still rules...

In the meanwhile, I've started looking for a Linux-based PDA with (possibly) full qwerty keyboard (real or simulated) and GPS capabilities too. may be one day i'll have the time to write something on it. Otherwise, it'll be cool nonetheless. And hopefully useful. :-)

My first Wikibution

that is, my first contribution to Wikipedia. In my city's entry, I've added a tidibit of info regarding one of the main sights. It doesn't show my name as I didn't register (yet), but now I have so I'll start adding my little knowledge to the lot already accumulated there...

Quantum Interrogation

Here, is one of the best 50 posts I blogged about last week. An exercise in quantum measurement, substituting the Schrodinger's cat with sleeping puppies, and knowing whether they're in the box without waking them up. cute, indeed