Getting from a printed chemical structure to a structure database is slow and painful. Every printed chemical structure should include a Chemical Structure QR Code with the InChIKey for the compound.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Chemical Structure QR
24-Apr-14Workcation
01-Mar-14I’m starting a week-long work block today — that is, I’m planning to work from 5AM to 5PM straight every day, like a “normal person”. Danielle has graciously consented to spend one week of her vacation doing everything else that needs to get done. Since last week we had a “stay-cation” where we went out […]
Books I recommend to everyone
07-Feb-14My friend Evan asked about design books and I spouted off a few – including The Systems Bible, which I now feel guilty about, because it’s not strictly a design book. I included it because it talks about how system design fails, and it’s humorous and I think teaches some larger truths. It was originally […]
Someone on #node.js wanted his script to pass a command-line option on the node shebang line. When I suggested he use the “-x” hack…
Learning By Breaking It Down
14-Jan-14When learning how to do something, it helps to break it down to irreducible subtasks. As an example, we homeschool our kids; my eldest daughter Kaija is 5th-grade age. Â We want her to practice writing simple paragraphs as a stepping stone to essays. Â But asking her to just “write a paragraph” can be overwhelming, because […]
Software <-> Politics
19-Jun-13Here’s an analogy that came up this morning. Liberals (Democrats) are like new CS grads. Â They are excited about writing new code (laws) and disdainful of the negative predictions others make based on their hard-earned experience (believe in the perfectibility of people/software). Conservatives are like grim old maintenance programmers. Â They have seen fads and standards […]
Less Fatal: Peptic Ulcer
07-Jun-13People don’t die of peptic ulcers so often anymore. Â Here’s a nice picture: Relevant dates include 1982, which is when Marshall and Warren identified H. pylori. Â It gets a bit steeper after 1994, when the CDC starts promoting antibiotic treatment of peptic ulcer disease. Â By 2005, when Warren and Marshall receive the Nobel Prize, it’s […]
The Future was Last Week
06-Jun-13In the future, we will have roving autonomous self-assembling bioreactors which will take in cellulosic matter, and convert it to natural gas and bio-available nutrients including complex amino acid chains. Some units will allow on-line collection of liquid food product, which can either be transported as-is or condensed into various solid, more easily stored forms, […]
But hey, if school kids are a) seeing knife wielding bullies and b) getting told to “not get involved” and quasi-punished for intervening, then well, maybe there’s more reasons to homeschool than I think. Of course, this is Calgary. Links via Gawker
Prague Floods Again
03-Jun-13Looks like some dimwit opened Flood Control Dam #3