At work I’ve recently got hold of two nice hardware upgrades: a portable 60 Gb HD (useful for carrying around large data) and an 80 Gb hard disk. The latter was much needed as the 40 Gb HD inside my Acer Veriton 7500G was getting rather small, both on the Windows side (which sadly I still need to use for some things) and on the Linux side (at one point / filled up, resulting in a system that would not log into X at all).I already made backups and moved the data, installing a fresh copy of Kubuntu 7.04 on the new HD. This means I’ll be able to keep my laptop at home and avoid largely nerdish settings such as this:
I’ve been able to complete most of the analysis for my Ph.D. thesis work, at last. I need a few runs more but I am arranging to work at a location of one of our research partners, as I don’t have a powerful enough computer to handle the calculations (apparently, 1Gb of RAM isn’t enough). At least the results I have look promising. Now all it’s left (and that’s not an easy task, heh). is to write them down in the “thesis summary” (deadline: June 30th) and then in the thesis itself. I’m already studying a bit on the topic and papers are quickly piling up on my desk.
Also, in order to be more productive I started using a wiki for laboratory notes (though I also keep my lab book next to the computer). Currently I’m using DokuWiki and it’s been good so far: I have a “diary” with daily notes and separate sections with analyses and my own comments. With a few plugins I’ve also been able to insert the CSV files I use directly.
This is for more organized data. I’m keeping BasKet Note Pads for quick code snippets and random notes I have to take. I have to thank Mike of Bioinformatics Zen fame for the suggestion he posted on using a hyperlinked documents as bioinformatics laboratory books.
I did not expect it, but today Square Enix announced a new expansion for Final Fantasy XI, called Wings of the Goddess (but I like the Japanese title - something along the line of The Holy Warriors of Altana - more). There’s also a trailer available on the main PlayOnline page.
From what I can see it looks like a time-warp expansion, set back in time in the Crystal War, but the images are scarce. It’s been announced for Winter 2007, I’ll see how it will be. I hope it’s not like Treasures of Aht Urghan, which was a disappointment all along.
While working through large text files for work, I found several command line tools whose existence was unknown to me before. Their usefulness is great however, expecially if you deal with comma or tab delimited files (I do, and a great deal).
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