rssThe affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications. - Charles Darwin, 1859
Computer
2006, March 22
Library Thing
LibraryThing - addictive
Go to LibraryThing.com and start cataloging. It is fun, an interesting way to compare collections, and a way to meet (virtually) other owners of favorite books.
Tim Spalding has put together a very attractive site, with a database that works with only occasional glitches, and a fairly intuitive interface. One thing that would be better would be a way to make the back-up option less hidden. In case the server crashes, which I take it did happen once, you should download your library as a text file, and keep it on your computer.
Then, to reconstitute the library online, you can just upload the books.csv file. To make the books.csv file, you go to the Extras tab at the top of the page, then Export Data. Click the "Export all data as text" link, and you will have a comma separated text file. It did not work for me in Excel as he suggests, but did load easily into FileMaker.
So far I have cataloged 300 books and am now taking a break to make graphics of covers not available, and perhaps to do some reviews. Tim says he is preparing to add a CD database; that will be at least as addictive.
2006, January 20
Tiger DeskTop Screen Shots
Karan at Flummel posted a screenshot of her desktop, so I am doing the same.
Here is the Tiger desktop without Dashboard.
And here is the desktop with Dashboard.
Click the picture for a larger image.
2005, June 14
Zoomify your photo
A photo presentation web application for all.
My daughter sent me a link to an article about a new-found Bach aria; in the article was a link to the Bach Archiv foundation.
Being interested in all things Bach and all things digital, I naturally went to the link to Bach digital under the Forschung | Projekte menu.
There were links to the individual parts of a section of the Cantata BWV 2 in Bach's manuscript presented with the application Zoomify.
On the Zoomify site, there are links to highlighted users' sites, one of which is the University of Wyoming's Digital Initiative. A large set of maps of Western Trails have been digitized and are presented with Zoomify.
Naturally, I was fascinated with the presentation. I immediately downloaded the free software for the Mac and tomorrow I will put up the results of my experiment.
2005, May 22
Folding at Home
Thanks to Kate at Cider Press Hill, I am now folding proteins.
The original deadline for completion of my first work unit was in July. But in 11 hours I am at 11%.
Current Work Unit
-----------------
Name: p1416_polyQ_beta-helix
Download time: May 22 14:40:04
Due time: July 26 14:40:04
Progress: 11% [|_________]
Now I don't feel guilty for having this beautiful expensive machine that I love so much, with more power and memory than I will ever use in my whole life, sitting around sleeping about 100 hours a week. Now I can feel justified.
Noah Johnson is folding and hosting a team website.
