James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

August 15, 2008

Internet In Berkeley

Filed under: Campus Life,Recreational Travel — Tags: , , — James @ 9:24 pm

Finally got my internet up and running. It was rather embarrassing having to call tech support because I couldn’t figure out the instructions for self-activation, but I’ve got that out of the way now, and will be writing up the details of my trip as I find time. For now: The apartment is great, I’m alive and well, and Berkeley seems to have more Indian restaurants per capita than any city I’ve ever visited!

August 3, 2008

Finished In Iowa

Filed under: Campus Life,Electronics,Recreational Travel — Tags: , , , , — James @ 9:58 pm

I made my final presentation for my summer position on Thursday. Here’s a graphic showing the distribution of sequences of interest over the rice chromosomes:

With that presentation, and the following day of creating readmes for my folders full of blast results, sequences data, and perl scripts, my summer project was wrapped up. My time as a visiting scientist/scholar has come to an end. (Though I still have the ID card to prove it.) Next weekend I’ll be driving down I-80 towards fame, fortune … and San Francisco. Looking over the route on google maps I noticed the giant salt flats I’ll be driving through in Utah. Hopefully I’ll have the willpower to stop to take pictures of that and other spectacular natural scenery (Nevada, Utah, Wyoming are all going to be totally new for me.)

The total drive is looking at around 26 hours, which I’m very tempted to split into two thirteen-hour drives to save on paying for an extra night in a hotel.

Whenever I do make it to my new apartment, there’ll be internet waiting for me there. I decided to go with AT&T’s U-verse DSL. Mostly I picked them because my alternative was Comcast, the company that’s been in the news lately for interfering with user’s internet connections, but it turns out there’s discount involved if I were to ever get an AT&T cell phone, a consideration my current envy of Monty’s new iPhone.

April 29, 2008

Cornell Pictures on Flickr

Filed under: Campus Life — Tags: , , — James @ 8:15 pm

After all the time I spent taking pictures of the campuses where I interviewed, I thought it’d only be fair to put up pictures of my alma mater (can I call it that yet, or do I have to wait until I ACTUALLY graduate?) Anyway, my timing worked out well and I got to document the campus on the best spring day I can remember from the past four years. Of course it had to happen a few weeks before I left for home, and thence to grad school. I think I’ve talked to everyone who reads this already, but if we haven’t talked in the last few weeks, I finally decided to accept the offer of UC-Berkeley’s plant biology program. For a summary of my visit to Berkeley, see Arriving in Berkeley, Another Day of 1000 interviews, Second Night … In Berkeley and Wrap up in Berkeley. This weekend I’ll be flying back home to be best man at the wedding of a good friend of mine. There may or may not be pictures afterwards. But here are a couple of examples of Cornell in the springtime (for more pictures you can either click on these pictures, or the thumbnail pictures on the right hand menu to visit my flickr account):
Blooming Tree by Uris
What Spring Should Look Like
And this isn’t really a cornell specific picture, but it’s a Cobra Lilly, and that’s just cool!:
Cobra Lilly

March 17, 2008

Dragon Day

Filed under: Campus Life — Tags: , , , — James @ 3:39 pm

Last Friday was dragon day on campus. So I thought I’d post a pointer to my new pictures on Flickr. What is dragon day? Basically it’s a way for students to blow off steam the day before Spring Break. The first year art students stay up all night building a dragon, which they then parade through campus accompanied by lots of students in costumes, finally burning the dragon in the middle of the Arts Quad. Meanwhile the rest of us, except the Engineering students, line the street and cheer as the dragon goes up in flames. The reason the Engineering students aren’t there to cheer is that they’re building a separate Phoenix as a challenge to the Art students. The Phoenix is very hit or miss, but this year it was a definite success.The Phoenix 

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