castanyes blaves
Random ramblings about some random stuff, and things; but more stuff than things -- all in a mesmerizing and kaleidoscopic soapbox-like flow of words.7/31/2005
I'm a little teapot
Short and stout
Here is my handle
Here is my spout
When I get all steamed up
Hear me shout
"Tip me over
and pour me out!"
According to Doug Farrell, vice president of investor relations at Affymetrix, one of Perlegen?s biggest successes is its selection by The International HapMap Project to produce its second-phase haplotype map?or HapMap for short. A haplotype is a region of a chromosome with a group of associated SNP variations. The project builds upon the work of the Human Genome Project and hopes to speed the discovery of genes related to common diseases such as asthma, diabetes, and cancer, by identifying SNPs.
For the first phase of the HapMap Project, officials funded San Diego-based Illumina, South San Francisco-based ParAllele (recent acquired by Affymetrix), and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. For the second phase, it was cheaper to work with Perlegen, despite the costs associated with switching technology platforms.
Lisa Brooks, the program director of the genetic variation program at the National Human Genome Research Institute, says that Perlegen?s application for the project was definitely the best.
?It?s very high quality, it?s a very flexible platform, and it was very cheap.? So much cheaper, in fact, that the HapMap?s original ambitions of genotyping between 600,000 and 1.5 million SNPs with its available budget were upgraded. The project is now attempting about 5 million SNPs in order to produce a genetic map with 4 million SNPs on it; the work should be finished in October.
7/27/2005
Declaration of Revocation
by John Cleese
To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.
Except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters.
You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."
You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to re-spell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.
Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up ?vocabulary." Using the same thirty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "uhh", "like", and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
Look up "interspersed."
There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary, then you won't have to use bad language as often.
2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).
You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents --- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles.
While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters.
British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies).
We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005.
You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French fries' are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat.
Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling "beer" is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon -- get used to it).
14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).
Thank you for your co-operation.
7/26/2005
Via google personalized enty page, I found out about www.ehow.com, which is a nice place to learn interesting things.
7/16/2005
The Linux patch management challenge by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- Vulnerability management is a service, not software, and one well worth paying for.
7/13/2005
7/12/2005
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/legplymo.htm
Lunch topics - good films
Filipe's pics:
Cube
www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/
The ring
www.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/
The sphere
www.imdb.com/title/tt0120184/
My pics:
Something about Mary
www.imdb.com/title/tt0129387/
7/09/2005
Linux on Power
OpenPower rocks!
IBM started this amazing project where they give access to people to
their OpenPower 710 and OpenPower 720 machines under Linux, so that
everybody can play, test and churn some numbers on them.
Trully amazing!
7/08/2005
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cell/?ca=dgr-lnxwSpufsCell
The last two days I have been thinking a lot about how politics is part of our daily life, of each of us individually and as a society, and how a lot of people simply don't realize about it: I have been following the British government reaction to the London Bombs and compared it to the Spanish government reaction to the Madrid Bombs last year. There is an obvious parallelism between both tragedies.
Today there was an analysis in "el Periodico" newspaper about the government reaction in one case and the other. And I had again this enormous sad feeling about how bad were we treated as a society by politicians like Aznar and Acebes. It was simply wrong. There is evilness in hiding information for political benefit, in lying and encouraging others to lie. In comparison, Blair and Clarke did managed the situation respectfully, although I'm sure that a thorough consideration of each and every gesture would let some biased or even unbiased criticism.
I have never imagined myself taking part in any active political role at any formal level, and I expect to remain in this way in the future. That will mean that there will be decent and competent politicians to represent my ideas and values much better that I would do personally.
If I'm the last chance to my own political representation, this will mean nothing else than _trouble_...
7/07/2005
Very sad about what happened this morning in London. Too similar to what happened in Madrid 16 months ago. I was in Cambridge when the train blasts occurred in Madrid, so I got in contact with Spain from England when that happened, talked to family and friends to see if they were all ok. Again, today I got in contact with England, from Spain, to see if all my friends were ok.
I am convinced that one day humanity will wake up and recognize how wonderful is the world, and how stupid and nonsense is all what is happening. We must believe in peace as the way to resolve differences. The way to peace is through love and tolerance...
7/06/2005
http://rapido.sourceforge.net/
Madrid 2M12 lost in the third round against Paris and London.
Linux supports more devices than any other operating system "out of the box." And those drivers are written in a very portable manner, as Linux supports more different processor platforms than any other operating system.
Greg Kroah-Hartman
uxoriousness
- foolish fondness for or excessive submissiveness to one's wife
7/05/2005
Inferring the effects of demography and selection on Drosophila melanogaster populations from a chromosome-wide scan of DNA variation
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/msi207v1
Lino Ometto, Sascha Glinka, David De Lorenzo and Wolfgang Stephan
[...]
Linkage disequilibrium (LD) measure ZnS (Kelly 1997) and interspecific divergence were estimated by the program VariScan (Vilella et al. 2005).
[...]
Vilella, A. J., A. Blanco-Garcia, S. Hutter, and J. Rozas. 2005. VariScan: analysis of evolutionary patterns from large-scale DNA sequence polymorphism data. Bioinformatics doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti403.
7/04/2005
Someone being "as mad as a box of frogs"
(referred to Mariah Carey in a blog...)
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