Where Is Joel?

Was bored in the LRT today. Took this picture and the result was super noisy, so I made this… Now I should probably get back the the real work I need to get done!

One of the most frustrating thing about perl is the lack of ability to create structs. Structured data makes life easier to program and easier to understand! It’s entirely possible I’m just missing the point here and I’ve been stumbling around blind for over a year now, but if that’s the case then maybe my thesis should instead be “the problem with perl is lack of easy to find documentation”. Ok, granted OO perl does exist, and you can make structs sort of it just doesn’t seem as simple or elegant as it does in C. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.

Anyways, as far as I can tell the following is the only way to make a struct. Seems ugly and insufficient.

use Class::Struct;

struct( 'test_type' => [ t1 => '$', t2 => '@' ]);

my $testObj = new test_type;

$testObj->t2(0, "Hello");
$testObj->t2(1, "Goodbye");

$testObj->t1("Joel is awesome");

my $array = $testObj->t2;
my $numElements = @$array;

for( my $i = 0; $i < $numElements; $i++){
print $testObj->t2($i) . "\n";
}

EDIT:
I guess I should mention that perl hashes can serve a similar purpose, but I also find them unsatisfactory. Maybe I just like strongly typed languages, but I think structs make code more readable than just using hash.

I really enjoyed this graffiti I walked by today. This person was very concerned about their lack of ability to park in alleys. I also enjoyed this ludicrous sign despite the fact there was no snow or ice in sight!

You all know you’ve thought about it. Probably discussed it at least 3 to 7 times. (If you’re a guy…) And now I have a lot of work to do tonight, so what am I doing? I am naturally compiling a list of the top five cartoon characters I have had crushes on in my life. Without further ado, here they are:

5) Megara, Hecules

4) Lois Griffin, Family Guy

3)Giselle, Enchanted

2) Yuna Final Fantasy X

1)Jasmine, Aladdin

There you have it. A total waste of 20 minutes of my time. Back to work!

I think from time to time I will put up the answers to things I try and do from time to time and sometimes forget how. That way maybe google will lead people here for easy answers.

To auto-indent a section in emacs:
1. Select Section.
2. C-M-\

Also remember, and I am never wrong, emacs is awesome.

I’m am currently jaded on ebay. The reason will become clear given my last three transactions:
1. Tried to buy a watch. Paid. The watch never arrived. Needed to fight to get my money back.
2. Tried to buy the same watch. Repeat step 1. Gave up on buying watch.
3. Bought Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens. Lens does not focus to infinity. (Sample shots following.)

[caption id="attachment_140" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="f/3.2"][/caption]

As you can see it gets a bit better when stopped down, but still not good. And who buys an expensive f/1.4 lens to use at f/5 when a cheap lens would do the same thing. (And in this case better)

Anyways, I’m mad, and I have to pay the shipping back. But the guy has never had a negative comment, so maybe I can get something worked out. Either way chances of me using ebay any time again soon are slim.

Joel out.

I came across this about a year ago. I’ve been sitting on it long enough.

There exists an excellent resource publicly available on the internet for protein phosphorylation. It is called PhosphoPep and is a huge database of known phosphorylation sites curated from an equally huge amount of Mass Spec information. Very nice if you’re trying to determine if a protein you are interested in is phosphorylated. And it *should* also be very useful for bioinformaticians trying to data mine. It is however missing an API and it is missing an easy way to download the database. Don’t get me wrong, the database can be downloaded, but it is incomplete. Once downloaded in order to get all of the information it is necessary to write programs to go retrieve all of the info from NCBI. This is ridiculous and the result is that I am awake at 1:15 wanting to strangle some scientists.

Joel = Mad

It does bring me to a very important point. With the wealth of information being made available in biology it is important that it be made easily available and put in centralized databases. Every year this becomes more critical as the number of papers published worldwide keeps increasing exponentially. (Seriously) This wealth of knowledge is useless unless we can put it together. Databases like this are a start, but seriously, MAKE THEM EASY TO USE and science will progress faster. Anger Building!!

Things that happen when I can’t sleep.

A new dinosaur smaller than a house cat was found in Alberta recently. As a U of A alum/current student it makes me proud that this tiny critter was discovered by U of Aians. The one in the picture was actually discovered in China, but their related so I put it up anyways. The most important thing here though is obviously… mini dinosaur pet? Get on that genetic engineers and scientist and creators of Jurassic park because I want one!