Shouldn’t the Problem Event Name be BlueScreenOfDeath?

Several weeks ago I had a paper from my UNC days accepted to PLOS Genetics… today it was officially released online: “Systematic Identification of Balanced Transposition Polymorphisms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae“.

Careful, don’t read it all at once :)

I just finished reading “Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming” and I came away from it really inspired by all the different ideas people have to limit, and even end, CO2 emissions. The authors argue for a carbon cap and trade system and spend most of the book laying out their rationale. I was particularly impressed by their arguments that we currently ignore the health and environmental problems of using certain fuels in many current cost analyses.

Even if you don’t care about the politics, funding mechanisms, or even the rationale for cleaner energy sources, their descriptions of the entreprenuers tackling these problems is still a great tour of small to medium-sized startup companies. In doing so, the authors demonstrate how it can be very profitable to go green, and how rewarding market forces is the key to solving many energy related issues. Definitely a recommended read.

Remember that new roof we got a few weeks back?  Our two Dish Network dishes were taken down as part of the process, with a scheduled reinstallation the following day. Thus began two weeks of problems…

The tech that showed up Tuesday morning told Leandra there was no way he could install the dishes on the ground or even back up on the roof because of the treeline. Surprising, since they’ve worked on the roof for the last two years. He refused to reinstall the two dishes, said a new dish might work, and left. As you might imagine, Leandra was not pleased. I called Dish customer support back that night, who apologized, comped the reinstall fee, and made a new appointment for Friday morning.

This time I stayed home to talk with the installer. I told him that I’d prefer a ground install due to the new roof, and he said that the new 1000.4 dish would work on the ground. The wrinkle: because it is a brand new dish it is only supposed to be used for new installs. He worked the phone talking with both Dish and the installation company. I even offered to pay for the new dish if it wasn’t too expensive, but nobody could even give us a price! After about 45 minutes we finally got someone to approve the exception, so he went ahead and put in the new dish on a pole in the backyard. A little while later we CNN HD running.

As he was finishing up the paperwork on the install I happened to change the channel to ESPN… and got nothing. No error, no warnings, just a black screen.  A systematic check showed that about a quarter of our channels were blacked out. After an hour of troubleshooting, and a call to the Dish tech support desk, we still had nothing. Since we needed to leave for our weekend trip to Charleston, I agreed to let the receiver run an update over the weekend and check back on Sunday.

Of course, things still weren’t working on Sunday, so I was back on the phone with support. They seemed confused as to which satellites I should be receiving a signal from on the new dish, but in the end they decided to send a third tech out on Tuesday afternoon.

The Tuesday tech spent a hour and a half testing the dish, making adjustments, etc, and finally decided that the HD receiver itself must be the problem. Two days later a replacement receiver arrived via UPS.

So last Friday night I was elbow deep in wires, and after a call to tech support and several restarts got the new receiver working. And ESPN worked! So the receiver was the problem.

Of course, we still had a bunch of unwatched shows on the DVR. While it is possible to transfer shows to an external hard drive, we decided that we could get all of the shows on DVD or over the internet, so we watched a few and let the rest go.

So three tech visits, several hours of troublehooting, and two weeks after our new roof we finally had our Dish system fully operational after replacing every major component. Hopefully things will last us at least another two years!

Google just released their version of a internet browser called Google Chrome, so I installed it this afternoon. In fact, I’m writing this post inside Chrome. So far it imported my bookmarks and other info from Firefox without a hitch and it seems to be rendering webpages fairly quickly. The toolbars at the top are a little smaller, and overall my screen feels a little bit larger, in Chrome then Firefox. Another cool feature is the “application shortcut” which makes desktop-style shortcuts that will load a site in a new window minus all the internet toolbars on top (much like a standard application). Though possible in Firefox or IE this is a much easier implementation and would be useful for Google calendar, docs, and other web applications.

However, I dearly miss the flashblock and ad-blocking capabilities, and the built-in spell checking, of Firefox. Trying to view sites with advertisements (like MSNBC or Intellicast) is down right painful and is a dealbreaker for daily use. I’m sure such tools will be available as Chrome matures, and it will definitley be interesting to see how it develops in relation to the other browsers.

Thursday afternoon I went with the rest of my lab on a Segway tour of downtown Raleigh with Triangle Segway.

We went up Fayetteville Street to the Raleigh State Capitol.

And past the governors mansion where we saw some of the bricks personalized by the inmates that made them.

And here’s all of us sporting our helmets.

I had a great time – it was my first time on a Segway, but I found it really easy to control. If only they were a bit cheaper….

I’m a sucker for data, and today I saw an interesting interactive map of the US on the MSNBC news website that lets you view data such as age of population, education, wealth/poverty levels, etc by state. Even cooler, you can zoom into each state and look county by county, and even by congressional district. For example, our area, the Research Triangle between Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, has one of the highest densities of college degrees in the country. Cool :)

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new way to update our collection of waterfall photos. Previously, we would add new waterfalls by hand into the respective state and county indices. While this worked for a few waterfalls, now that we have well ~140 falls it had become hard to manage. Instead, I decided to build a small database that would hold the important info (state, directions, photo, etc.) and write some PHP code to build the pages for us. I’ve been wanting to learn a bit more PHP code and this seemed like a good excuse reason.

As you might have guessed, I’ve finished the first version and our redesigned waterfall site is now automatically generated. Anytime we have an update we only need to add the data to the database and let the scripts do the rest of the work. Sweet.

We’ve gotten great use out of our Samsonite luggage over the last few years, and while they’re in surprisingly good shape, on a few occasions I’ve wanted something a bit more mobile. Over the past few months I’ve been researching convertible bags, i.e. bags that let you have both backpack straps as well as a wheeled option. This weekend I finally settled on one and we purchased a 22″ Osprey Meridian Wheeled Convertible pack (reviewed favorably by Outside online among others). I like that the bag has wheels for the airport, backpack straps for moving through rougher environments, and a removable daypack for sidetrips. Plus, as long as the daypack isn’t full, the entire bag is carry-on sized.

On the left you see the main bag with the daypack attached; on the right, the front of the bag with the straps stowed behind the flap. Below you see the main bag separate from the daypack.

Leandra and I have been gradually paring down the amount of stuff we bring on our trips, and my goal is to use this bag exclusively on our 11 day Barcelona trip this summer. Fortunately I’ll have a few chances to try it out on smaller trips before then!

I’ve been eying a new receiver for our home theater for the last year, and after a good bit of research, I decided to get an Onkyo (TX-SR705). Of course, I needed to get a good deal on it, so for the past two months I’ve been watching a number of websites for deals and discounts. This past Tuesday I saw a price I liked at Circuit City and brought my new baby home!

Leandra helped me with the initial install last night (she’s getting quite good at cable stripping) and I’ve got all the major parts working. It sounds good already, but I’m sure I can get it better with a bit of tweaking and optimization.

Unfortunately, this upgrade means our our master Harmony 880 remote is temporarily out-of-sync, so we have to use individual remotes until I get a chance re-program. I’d forgotten how much the Harmony remote had automated things and I can’t wait to make it the only remote again!