An unexplainable surge in popularity...

My blog has been visited by more then 40 people on sunday - strange since I did not post for two full days. Why? may be I ended up in the trackback of some heavily visited blog.

mah? they seem to come mostly through image searches in google.

Am I going to hit big time? I don't think so. I'll keep the victory flag for my soon to come Nobel Prize cerimony

Again on my digital camera

Let's go back to The Imaging Resource to select my new camera. I used this website three years ago, and was thouroughly satisfied with my CoolPix 2100.

And since Nikon kept me happy, I may go for this one:



It looks snappy, has a big zoom and the swiveling body will let me overcome troubles I had with my previous, when trying to snap piccies in awkward positions. Hopefully, when taking macros the flash will tune down, differently from the 2100 whose dark macro shot were mostly overexposed.

Volcanoes!!!

Go and pay a visit to Sarda and Janine at FishFeet, they're running a contest/poll to decide which is the most beautiful strato-volcano around the planet.


The picture here is of a spectacular Mount Etna, unfortunately not shortlisted by them, but I feel it's worth a look. Hopefully, I'll go to see it one day... Oh, little fairy, make my wish come true!!! This one, and the one about winning the lottery - no wait, let's say the Nobel Prize. :-D

Good. some more blog for you to look at: Hairy Museum of natural history
Raptor's Nest

(all thanks FishFeet for letting me steal her blogroll)

More of my life...

The spider has reappared. I wonder where it (she?) spends the nights. the small one seem gome though. too bad for them.

Didn't see them for some time though. I have spent the weekend in Anthisnes, with my girlfriend and family. Saturday did suck a bit, rainy anjd cold, and was wandering on my own through Liege's mall. In the evening rwandese-populated dinner at an indian restaurant in Namur - the Taj Mahal - Bleagh. Frankly, my colleague Vikash cooks much better than that, and it's cheaper and more fcheerful too. We left very disappointed. Although I have to say, rwandese really do bitch when they have chosen the wrong place. Quite embarassing for me.

Sunday was wonderful though, sunny and may be a bit windy but nonetheless enjoyed a long walk in the countryside with Marie, while her mum dozed off after arriving from Africa. then I cooked lunch for everybody and the girls planned Easter and talked about... weddings as usual. boooooriiing, so I left to sleep.

That's it. Ah, no, on saturday I also bought a new set of speakers for my laptop. Wanted to buy those fancy ones with power through the USB port, but they came at a price, 1W RMS for 25EUR min (Samsung, 30 EUR for Trust, Logitech came at 50).
For 30 EUR I got a 2.1 set-up, mains-powered, 2 5W speaker plus a 7W subwoofer - and it's Logitech, a brand that's never disappointed me. I also started looking for a new digital camera, since i seem to have misplaced my old one. Pity, since if I really have lost it I will not be able to use the underwater shell any longer. It's very much camera-specific. Anyway, it was well time for me to change it, I have been longing for a decent zoom (at least 10x) for two years now, since I realised that 3x is barely noticeable and not at all useful for naturalistic pictures.

Couldn't find my old favourite though, the Konica Minolta Z-3 (or the Z-5). I am also wondering whether i should rather buy a 'proper' one, with interchangeable objectives - nothing too fancy, again, 5MP is fine for me, the important thing is to get a good generalist objective, plus one with serious punch in the occasions I am going to use it most - whatever they may be. mah?

Today's post... all in one...

Lots of things I wanted to post about, today...

The fact that a pair of male spiders were fighting each other in my bedroom's ceiling, yesterday - to conquer the heart of a big female sitting in the corner... It must be tough to menace themselves with big sharp venomous fangs while hanging upside down three meters up. they weren't there this morning, when I woke up. Possibly one of them won, and the newly married couple headed off to another room to consume their mating - and soon after, the female to consume the male, most likely. It sucks to be a male spider.

Again. Vlaaivis is available for free on the net. This is a neat piece of software from J&J, which shows complex data in a extensively customisable pie-chart: have a look at it!

Finally, I am going to meet Stephen Hawking on May the 20th!!! Isn't this great? My GF also hinted me the possibility of meeting Eddy Merckx, a living legend of cyclism!!! Don't know when though...

Other than that, I spent the day analysing the diversity of a bunch of molecules, and selecting some of them to show to the Chemist who head the CNS projects to see if he likes them. All within the scope of a Blood/Brain Barrier study I am going to work on in the following month or two. Oh, and I bought a couple of books and a t-shirt from play.com. And no, I don't know who this guy HIM is, just thought it would be nice to have a pentagram T-shirt for 5 EUR.

Enough for today I believe!!! See you tomorrow!

GOD itself is on Pharyngula!!!

Answering a critical post of our dear PZ Myers (by the way nice signature piccie) regarding this crankpot Kenneth Poppe, GOD itself posted a comment!!!

I listened out for him for 25 years and never heard a peep.

I was busy chewing on a parallel universe. It's rude to talk with my mouth full. Now I have the Internets.

So ... what's your prob? And I hope it's not another sob story about a pet with cancer or some crap.

back to the crankpot, however, he published a book titled: Reclaiming Science from Darwinism

But can you believe he couldn't even manage to get a correct picture for the cover? Look at that DNA coil!!! LOL... what an idiot!!!

Color Blindness

I came to this wikipedia page on color blindness while I was reading Carl Zimmer (yes, again)
talking about rats with human vision.

Both pages are quite interesting, with the wikipedia finally clarifying my ideas on daltonism (from John Dalton, famous chemist who (first?) described his own condition. Zimmer's piece, instead, focuses on the evolution of our very special color vision - special since apes, differently from most mammals, do have three receptors (RGB) rather than just two (GB). So scientist added the missing Red pigment genes, which in our case is just a duplicated and mutated version of the green pigment. But how about the brain? we have specialised structure to make sense of the added information - could mice do the same? apparently so. Come on, check it out in the original piece.

(piccie stolen from the loom)

That's not a monkey...

it's two monkeys!!!


Carl Zimmer writes:

Marmoset chimeras. These cute little monkeys pose a serious philosophical quandary. Each individual marmoset is an amalgam of cells from two different marmosets. That's because marmosets are generally conceived as fraternal twins and then trade stem cells like mad. Even eggs and sperm can belong to siblings. It may look as if a male marmoset is fathering baby marmosets, but he may actually just be their uncle. (Here's the paper.)

Isn't this incredible?!? I never suspected such weird things could happen in mammals...

3rd rock from the sun

e in tema di telefilms, mi permetto di segnalare: 3rd rock from the sun, spassosissima sit-com di argomento fantascientifico: quattro alieni atterrano sul pianeta in missione esplorativa, travestendosi da 'famiglia suburbana tipica'.



ho visto una manciata di episodi e son davvero incredibili!!! le battute scientifiche son sempre azzeccate, si vede che chi ha scritto gli episodi ha una certa conoscenza - un po' come Futurama.

se siete interessati, ve li posso passare la prox volta che scendo. senno' acccatatevilli in dvd, o se preferite su tvtorrents.com

I am tempted to learn it, almost

After a week spent reading Absorption and Drug Development
Solubility, Permeability, and Charge State by pION's Alex Avdeef, I'm now reading Clinical Pharmacokinetics: Concepts and Applications by Malcolm Rowland and Thomas N. Tozer. Pretty interesting read, but I need a break from time to time.

I've found the wikipedia page about sardinian, the language spoken in my birthplace. Well, not exactly in my birthplace since we have a mixed italian/sardinian/corsican dialect up there.

Anyway, it's quite interesting to read. Have a go! Or, you can read one of the books above - how about that? Now, back to the exercises :-P

And, once again, where are you?

A small partial map of the Internet. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. This graph contains over 40,000 nodes, which represents about 2% of the Class C network address space.

from wikipedia.

We were like this, once...

Only, we weren't ectopic. the picture comes from Wikimedia, the image/audio/movie part of wikipedia. Original page is linked, just click the picture.

the embryo in the image is seven weeks old, 10mm long, and implanted itself in the wrong place, in one of the ovarian tubes connecting the ovaries to the womb. In the upper part, the placenta's willi are forming, although I guess they would not be able to complete their development as normal, not being in the proper place.

It's fascinating to think that we were like that, once. You can see the eyes, the limbs and the brain, and all little parts which would grow up to male up one of us. Incredible, isn't it?

Ieri ho visto...

The last king of Scotland...

che dire? tosto. purtroppo la storia si conclude in maniera un po' Hollywoodiana, il che e' un peccato. e il personaggio principale non ha un granche' d'evoluzione durante tutta la storia. almeno a mio parere, reagisce piutttosto che agire. Chi domina la scena e' Forest Whittaker nei panni del generale Idi Amin. Impressionante e terrificante a tratti.

Le scene son molto crude, meno violente di Blood Diamond, ma psicologicamente piu' incisive. O forse io son particolarmente reattivo al vedere una ragazza nera tagliata in pezzi e ricucita a casaccio. ma tant'e`. di certo non il film cui volete portare la vostra ragazza. ah, e non pianificate di mangiare la sera. dopo non avrete voglia. se anticipate, correte il rischio di riveder la cena durante il film. urgh.

Feeling Romantic?

Tell your significant other I love you in all the language of the world!!!

from http://www.freelang.com/expressions/jetaime.html

AFRIKAANS	ek het jou lief / ek is lief vir jou
ALBANAIS	të dua
ALLEMAND	ich liebe Dich
ALSACIEN	ich hab die lieb
ANGLAIS	I love you
ARABE DIALECTAL (maghrébin)	n'bghick
ARABE DIALECTAL (oriental)	bahebbak (à un homme) / bahebbik (à une femme)
ARABE LITTÉRAIRE	ouhibbouka (à un homme) / ouhibbouki (à une femme)
ARMÉNIEN	yes kez siroumem
ASTURIEN	quiérote
ATTIÉ	min bou la yé
AZERI	men seni sevirem
BAMBARA	né bi fè
BAS-ALLEMAND	ik heef di leev
BAS-SAXON	ik hou van ju
BASQUE	maite zaitut
BAOULE	mi klôa
BENGALI	aami tomakey bhalo basi
BERBÈRE	righ kem
BIÉLORUSSE	Кахаю цябе (kahaju ciabie)
BIRMAN	nga nin ko chit te
BOBO	ma kia bé nà
BOSNIAQUE	volim te
BRETON	karout a ran ac'hanout / da garout a ran / me az kar
BULGARE	обичам те
CATALAN	t'estimo
CHEYENNE	ne'mehotatse
CH'TI	j't'aquiers
CHINOIS	wo ai ni
CORÉEN	saranghe
CORSE	amu tè / ti tengu caru
CRÉOLE ANTILLAIS	mwen enmen
CRÉOLE GUADELOUPÉEN	mwen enméw
CRÉOLE GUYANAIS	mo contan to
CRÉOLE HAITIEN	mwen renmen'w / mouin rinmin'w
CRÉOLE MARTINIQUAIS	mwen inmin'w
CRÉOLE MAURICIEN	mo content toi
CRÉOLE RÉUNIONNAIS	mi aime a ou
CROATE	volim te
DANOIS	jeg elsker dig
DIOULA	mi fê
ESPAGNOL	te amo / te quiero
ESPÉRANTO	mi amas vin
ESTONIEN	ma armastan sind
FÉROÏEN	eg elski teg
FINNOIS	minä rakastan sinua
FLAMAND	ik hou van jou / ik heb je lief
FRANCIQUE LORRAIN	ich lìwe dich
FRANCIQUE RHÉNAN	ich honn dich gäer
FRIOULAN	o ti vuei ben
FRISON	ik hâld fan dy
GAÉLIQUE D'ÉCOSSE	tha gaol agam ort / tha gaol agam oirbh
GAÉLIQUE D'IRLANDE	tá grá agam duit
GALICIEN	amo-te / ámote / quero-te / quérote
GALLOIS	rydw i'n dy garu di
GÉORGIEN	me shen mikvarkhar
GREC	s'agapo
GUARANÍ	rojhayhû
GUJARATI	hun tane prem karun chhun
HAWAÏEN	aloha wau iā 'oe
HÉBREU	ani ohev otakh (homme > femme) ani ohevet otkha (femme > homme)
HINDI	main tumse pyar karta hoo
HMONG	kuv hlub koj
HONGROIS	szeretlek
INDONÉSIEN	saya cinta padamu / saya cinta kamu
ISLANDAIS	ég elska þig
ITALIEN	ti amo
JAPONAIS	aishitemasu / aishiteru (peu utilisé) anata ga daisuki desu (plus "mignon")
KABYLE	hamlagh-kem (homme > femme) hamlaghk (femme > homme)
KANNADA	naanu ninnanna pritisutteney
KHMER	bang srolaïgn ôn (homme > femme) ôn srolaïgn bang (femme > homme)
KINYARWANDA	ndagukunda
KURDE	ez te hez dikim
LANGUEDOCIEN (OCCITAN)	t'aimi
LAO	khoi hak tchao lai
LATIN	te amo
LETTON	es tevi mīlu
LIBANAIS	b'hibik (homme > femme) b'hibak (femme > homme)
LIGURE	mi te amu
LINGALA	na lingi yo
LITUANIEN	aš tave myliu
LUXEMBOURGEOIS	ech hunn dech gär
MACÉDONIEN	te sakam
MALAIS	aku cinta padamu
MALAYALAM	enikku ninné ishtamaanu
MALGACHE	tiako ianao / tia anao aho (plus fort)
MALTAIS	inħobbok
MANXOIS	ta graih aym ort
MAORI	kei te aroha au i a koe
MONGOL	Би чамд хайртай (bi chamd khairtai)
MORÉ	mam nong-a fo
NAPOLITAIN	t'ammo
NDEBELE	niya ku tanda
NÉERLANDAIS	ik hou van jou
NEPALI	ma timilai prem garchhu
NORVÉGIEN	jeg elsker deg
OCCITAN	t'aimi
OURDOU	mein tumse mohabbat karta hoon (locuteur M) main tumse mohabbat karti hoon (locuteur F) mujhe tum se pyar heh
OUZBEK	men seni sevaman / men seni yahshi ko'raman (moins formel)
PAPIAMENTO	mi ta stima bo
PERSAN	dustat dâram (formel) / duset dâram (courant)
PICARD	ej t'a kèr
POLONAIS	kocham cię
PORTUGAIS	amo-te / eu te amo (portugais brésilien)
PROVENÇAL	t'aimi
PUNJABI	mein tenu pyar karda han (locuteur M) mein tenu pyar kardi han (locuteur F)
QUECHUA de CUZCO	munakuyki
RAPA NUI	hanga rahi au kia koe
ROMANI	kamaù tut
ROUMAIN	te iubesc
RUSSE	Я тебя люблю (ia tibia lioubliou)
SAMOAN	ou te alofa ia te oe
SANGO	mbi yé mô
SARDE	deo t'amo (logudorois) / deu t'amu (campidanois)
SAVOYARD	jhe t'âmo
SERBE	volim te
SESOTHO	ke ya ho rata
SHONA	ndinokuda
SINDHI	moon khay tu saan piyar aahay
SINHALA	mama oyata aadareyi (spoken) / mama obata aadareyi (formal)
SIOUX	wastewalake
SLOVAQUE	ľúbim ťa / milujem ťa
SLOVÈNE	ljubim te / rad te imam (locuteur M) / rada te imam (locuteur F)
SOBOTA	volim te (courant) / se te volime (littéraire)
SOMALI	waan ku jecelahay
SONINKÉ	na moula
SOUSSOU	ira fan ma
SUÉDOIS	jag älskar dig
SWAHILI	nakupenda
TAGALOG	mahal kita
TAHITIEN	ua here vau ia oe
TAJIKI	jigarata bihrum duhtari hola (homme > femme) tra lav dorum (femme > homme)
TAMOUL	naan unnai kaadhalikkarn
TATAR	min sine yaratam
TCHÈQUE	miluji tě
TELUGU	nenu ninnu premisthunnanu
THAI	ผมรักคุณ (phom rak khun) - locuteur M ฉันรักคุณ (chan rak khun) - locuteur F
TIBÉTAIN	na kirinla gaguidou
TURC	seni seviyorum
TURKMÈNE	seni söýärin
UDMURT	mon tone jaratiśko
UKRAINIEN	Я тебе кохаю (ia tebe kohaiu)
VÉNÈTE	t'amo
VIETNAMIEN	anh yêu em (homme > femme) em yêu anh (femme > homme)
WALLON (orthographe à betchfessîs)	dji vs voe voltî
WOLOF	nob nala
XHOSA	ndiyakuthanda
YIDDISH	ich hob dir lib
YORUBA	moni ife e
ZULU	ngiyakuthanda

Darren Naish has lots of goodies

Have been missing its his new posts, since he moved to scienceblogs.

So, go and check them out!!!

Big cats
(these are two posts)

Seriously big squirrels: check out the piccie.

a post on Rhynos used during wars (fact or fiction?)

Narwhal's Sonic Lance (no it's not something out of sci-fi)

weekend preparations...

As preparation for the weekend, it's started to rain again, as usual...

Well, luckily I didn't wash the car, and most certainly will not wash it tomorrow, unless the sun shines so strong when i wake up that I need sun glasses. ah! not a chance, I'd say...

let's see how it turns out...

plus, my machine today is sluggish like never, there must be something (firefox with 141MB of RAM?) which is dragging it down... Memory leak? who knows? but even so, having 1GB of RAM I should have more than enough juice left to run the house, no? Nope: windows task manager says: mem usage 1411248K/2502016K. So I'm crunching on Virtual memory only. pants!

Ok, may be it's also my fault for keeping firefox + excel + word it open for one or two weeks at a time, before being forced to reboot.

But why, ho why, does this only happen on windows?

I have a new address

So, it's done. I signed the contract (co-signed, since Marie signed with me) and from the first of june we'll be living together. Woah! Big move uh?

Lots of things to do now, organise for the utilities contracts to be moved, which one to keep out of the various ones, when exactly move and so many tiny little things. I guess I am becoming adult. Finally. It was well time...

Back to work now, it's going to be hectic today, and plenty of things to do before leaving. tomorrow, I am off with some friends and colleagues at Durbuy, for the chocolate festival - although it sounds like just a market, on the net. mah...

Sunday at home cleaning, resting, watching movies, unless saturday evening I head off to BXL to catch my GF coming out of work. We'll see.

By all means, have a nice weekend you too!!!

Coffee Break

Curiosita': a che ora fate pausa? quante al giorno? con chi? avete una stanza comune x staccarvi dall'ambiente del lavoro/studio?

all'Uni di Soton c'era una stanzona dove tutti si riunivano, miriade di sedie, e due signore inglesi attempate (sotituite poi da una punk, e una cinesina niente male) che servivano in cambio di una modica offerta x te' e biscotti.

qua le coffee area son sparse un po' x tutto il compound. I Chimici Computazionali si riuniscono nell'area comune del rispettivo piano, ma si tengono separati dagli oncologi (le cui biologhe son uno spettacolo da guardare, specie SuperGirl che c'ha il fisico atletico e due puppe da paura)

Dove lavoro io invece, in ADMETox, ognuno va x conto suo, alcuni semplicemente alla macchinetta del loro piano - noi tre moschettieri si va alla cucina/meeting room appena creata. stefan si fa il suo te', vikash preme i tasti della macchinetta x un caffe', io invece verso un qaurto di litro di latte nella tazza, caffe' solubile ed altre spezie e zicco tutto nel microonde. si parla di biologia (io), o di porno (stefan), o di chissa' che altro (vikash) mentre si spera che Barbie girl passi vestita provocante. :-)

Did you ever wonder where you are?

How your work connect to that of other people around you? Somebody did, and decided to scourge citations from 800,000 scientific papers to assemble this map:



I am currently somewhere where it says "Therapeutic Research" (lower left), but have been between "Material" and "Physical Chemistry", and almost reached "Computer Science" already.

Click on it to download it, but be careful, it's huge. 5.7MB.

Never mind conservapedia

Many people (including Carl Zimmer) seems very worried about conservapedia, a wiki-like-pedia essentially full of rubbish. Don't worry, I say to them... People who visits it are mostly intelligent people who think of it as an alternative to the daily visit at The Onion, or AvantNews. And those few who visits it as source and repository of conservative information, well, they would not visit wikipedia anyway. Just let them wither away, and let's just hope that we outbred them, and not the other way around as it happens in Idiocracy, a movie I talked about some time ago...

have a nice sunday. I am off to see the science tunnel with a friend, after lunch.