danny’s space

Using IE7 now. Firefox 2.0 sucks bigtime. It randomly hangs about 5 times a day on different websites. I’ve backed up my settings, uninstalled it, downloaded v1.5.0.7 from the releases directory on the Mozilla site (thankfully all the releases are there), and am installing it now. I guess this is an example of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, or don’t rush to install new software but wait until the next minor version is released.

- Update -

Reversion to 1.5.0.7 went fine. No need to restore bookmarks or other user data, these are not removed during uninstallation. No hangs yet on 1.5.0.7. A few extensions and themes weren’t backwards compatible, but a quick visit to the Mozilla extensions site and a bit of trawling through the extension version histories spat out older versions of extensions that were compatible with 1.5.

So, spilled some sugary sweet potato soup liquid onto my laptop keyboard yesterday. It was okay to start with, but as the water evaporated, the keys got more and more stuck, and the spacebar along with the Ctrl and Alt keys refused to go down, or up for that matter.

Good news is that I could remove the keys and the flexy support things that hold the keys in place. To do this, shut the laptop down, unscrew the keyboard screws from the back of the laptop, and click off the plastic holders on the face of the keypad. Then, using a small flathead screwdriver, pop the key tops off. All keys use the same type of mechanism to hold them down. The spacebar is similar, but has guide wires that are also connected to the keypad base and need to be removed. Once the keys and the structures that hold them in place are removed, give them a good clean with warm water.

Now for the bad news. Don’t use nail polish remover, even the ‘non acetone’ type. The one I used had something acetate in it, and look what it did to my spacebar

Nasty. The flash makes it look worse than it does under ambient incandescent lighting. But the nail polish remover burnt little holes in my spacebar and corroded the plastic. Not good.

But at least the keys work now, hmm.

After cleaning, just pop the key supports back, and then pop the key tops back onto the supports.

Meanwhile, Firefox 2.0 sucks. It has crashed so many times, but at least comes with built-in crash recovery. It even remembers what you type in textboxes, to an extent. I say stick with Firefox 1.5 and wait until the next 2.x version is out before upgrading.

Stuff doesn’t just stop after hand-in. Neither does stuffing of the face. During writing, I was sitting at home eating Kettle chips all day, 8am to 2am and typing. Now that it’s all done, the celebratory meals are in full swing.

Last Monday and Tuesday the honours bunch had late lunches at the Taiwanese place, Sunflower, on George St. Highly recommended! Quaint, cosy atmosphere, great Taiwanese food. Wednesday had lunch at Wok Station on Glebe Pt Rd with Poker. Bit pricey but tasty nonetheless. (I don’t have a very developed food vocabulary. It consists of ‘yum’ and ‘yuck’ basically). Thursday was lunch with Litty and Shereen, who handed in Friday before last, at Thai La Ong on King St in Newtown. Great to catch up with people I haven’t seen in ages. A quite time at home on Friday, then a filling dinner with Sara on Saturday when we attempted to cook pasta. Then dinner with Nerd Con last night at Cafe de Macau in Eastwood, which was surprisingly, erm, yum. And today, lunch with people from the various labs at Forestor’s Lodge in Glebe. And sometime this week, lunch with the honours bunch (who have now all finished!) somewhere in the city.

My scales aren’t going to be happy!

Yeah, couldn’t think of a better title. Random g33k stuff here really.

New updates to software. Firefox 2.0 is out - it’s not that good; a few new features like spell check in fields, but many extensions are incompatible with it. Evernote 1.5 is out - not much change either apart from largely cosmetic updates that I can tell. IE 7 is also out - beware when installing, there’s no cancel button! The status bar just does that scrolly thing, doesn’t even represent the true status, it just tells the user that something is happening.

Meanwhile, if you want to automatically hibernate your computer at a set time, use the Scheduled Tasks in Control Panel, and set it to run the command:

C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll, SetSuspendState

Set a date and time and click OK and it’s set. Of course you need the proper power management settings on your computer, but if you can hibernate normally (manually) then this should work.

Well, IE installation is telling me to restart. I think I’ll shut down and play with it tomorrow.

It is done. Phew. Up until 4am this morning printing out stuff, and then wake up today to collage, lug it all to uni and hand it in. Unfortunately a few other honours students are still going. I guess it’s okay, you only lose 0.5 marks per day it’s late, not like the crazy 10%/day thing.

So what to do now? Don’t know. Sleep? Who knows. But I think a copy and paste of my acknowledgements page is in order…

I am indebted to many people for their invaluable assistance, helpful advice, and kind guidance rendered this year.

Immense gratitude is owed to my three supervisors, Robyn Overall, Penny Smith, and David Day, who have spent countless hours supporting me in my struggle with biology. Thanks go to Robyn for being, amongst other things, a smiling and reassuring constant with a fantastic ability for lateral thinking; to Penny for her eagerness and vast knowledgebase; and to David for his clever ideas and meticulous appraisals.

Much appreciation is also extended to Angela Ho for her friendship, skilful guidance and eagerness to share, as well as for supplying vectors, competent cells, an Arabidopsis cDNA library, and other lab paraphernalia. I am grateful to Jing Ji, Michelle Barthet and Emilie Cameron for their unceasing and uncomplaining help in vector construction, supplying competent cells, and general lab assistance. Thanks go to Debbie Barton for her patient teaching of tricky immunocytochemistry techniques and for her help and advice on microscopy. Thanks also to Errin Johnson for her self-sacrificial attitude when giving assistance and advice in anything from PCRs to confocal microscopy. I am also indebted to both Errin and Debbie for their highly demanding, last-minute efforts trying to divulge the secrets of protein aggregates using electron microscopy, which was nothing short of heroic. I look forward to studying this in greater detail with them. Christine Faulkner, now living in Scotland, was indispensable in setting up half the project, donating vectors and providing encouragement. I am grateful for the help offered by John Gardiner in searching microarray databases as well as for his kind concern for me. Laurence Cantrill provided much valuable assistance with the Zeiss confocal microscope and other cell biology matters, as well as being open and approachable. I also owe a great debt to Dave Collings from Australian National University for conjuring up half the project and for helpful discussions and encouraging comments on artefacts and over-expression. Thanks to Leila Blackman, also from ANU, for her constructive observations and for vectors. Thanks also to Rosemary White and Craig Wood, both from Canberra, for supplying dyes and vectors. Louise Cole must also be mentioned for her helpful advice. Thanks to Ellie Kable and the Electron Microscopy Unit for allowing the use of the Nikon confocal microscope; to Jan Marc for allowing the use of his particle inflow gun; and to the Skurray/Firth lab for kindly allowing the use of their equipment.

This list would be incomplete without mentioning the rest of the honours students, whose friendship and support have made this year much more enjoyable.

Finally, I am greatly thankful for the support and understanding of my family and Sara, who have undoubtedly borne the majority of my stress this year. Last but not least, I am thankful that God has given me this wonderful opportunity to study this world in such detail and be continuously amazed at the intricacies of biology.

No days left! Just a part of a day. A large part, but still only a part.

Bit of a scare before. The printer stopped working, wasn’t communicating with the computer. *Gasp* But I think it’s a cable fault (what the heck, that never happens) because when I used another USB cable it worked fine. Strange stuff.

Meanwhile, the thesis is at 74 pages now, phew. Just going through a final draft looking for mistakes, of which there are probably a lot.

It’s scream time!

Lessons of the day: learn how to colour-match screen and printer output before crucial printing needs to be done. Also, laptop displays are very bad at reproducing colour. On the Photosmart 3110, the ICC profile that came with the updated printer drivers is the way to go, along with the ‘absolute colorimetric’ setting, whatever that means.

Still waiting for updates from my supervisor but I think she’s called it a day, so will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Then will need to frantically update the thesis with her corrections, send it around to supervisors for them to have a read, and then hopefully make final corrections, print and check over a final draft, and then should be done.

Well, save for all that printing. Publishing four copies of a 150 page thesis on two colour inkjets is quite, erm, interesting.

Oh how I wish it was all over. I’m sure my supervisors feel the same way.

I’m so sick of having to find references for stuff that is like, duh.

Second draft is done. It’s down to 86 pages, so 11 more to cut. Shouldn’t be too hard for my supervisors, they’re very experienced at chopping things.

Another thing I’ve realised much too late is the value of good (electronic) note taking while reading. It makes finding references so much easier. Electronic is good because it’s searchable. I started using EverNote, but it has quite a few limitations including its bodgy search function. It’s built on a good premise but has many user interface issues. Hopefully the new version they put out in the last few weeks is better.

Anyway, need sleep. Argh!

How time flies. Am I having fun? Well, by definition, I must be.

The MMB people hand in today. Mind you, their thesis is substantially shorter and their projects tend to be better executed, just because they’re an, erm, better endowed school.

Anyway, still making changes and cutting out lots of stuff. So much to do, so little time left. Why am I blogging then?

Just when I thought it was smooth sailing…

Went in to uni today to get face-to-face feedback from my supervisors. And was talking to a friend and she mentioned something about double spacing.

DOUBLE SPACING?!

Turns out my thesis as it stands is 25 pages over the limit. Great. I still need to make lots of changes to the expression, also add a fair bit of stuff to the discussion, move things around, and even re-analyse one of my results. Also need to make a new figure or two, change a few existing figures. Plus we need to chop away 25 pages worth of thesis.

It’s going to be a long weekend. And not the good type.