My Cells

I've been going to class and learning all sorts of wonderful things since the 14th. Today, we got to see the results of two days worth of immunocytochemistry work. It involved staining HeLa cells two different ways: with a fluorophor-conjugated secondary antibody and ToPro3 (to highlight the nuclei).

I've been told the picture is good, but must honestly admit that I'm very surprised. During the process, I switched well positioning, mixed the ToPro3 incorrectly the first time, and totally borked the nail polish application.

Here's how they appeared under the confocal microscope:

An old friend revisited

It's weird the turn of events life brings you. My last post concerned a week-old auction of an old friend.

Well, it seems that transaction fell through and the old friend got put back on the block. So, I am happy to mention that today, my 32 birthday, I have just purchased the Cybermotion Navmaster Self-Guided Vehicle.

http://www.govdeals.com/eas/closeditems_sold.cfm?itemID=1010&acctID=685

Looks like I'll be putting up my sign soon :-)

Old Friend

Talk about serendipity...

Today I presented a talk on PGP/GPG for the Charleston SC Linux Users Group. Later, I discovered a member was a robotics fan. It made me reminisce about my "days of olde" and I started googling things.

The first result took me here:

http://www.govdeals.com/eas/closedItems_sold.cfm?itemID=1010&acctID=685&CFID=7282408&CFTOKEN=65738827

I'm truly amazed. I'm also very disappointed that I didn't find it a week ago.

For those that don't know, I'll fill in with the back story. It'll also give you some insight into LabThug.

That item is MARVIN -- Mobile Autonomous Vehicle with Intelligent Navigation. He is a CyberMotion (now defunct?) NavMaster K2A mobile platform. That was the star of USC's (now defunct?) mobile robotics lab. That lab was the birthplace of LabThug. See back when I was a student there, I was lucky enough to work-study for that lab. I worked on MARVIN: reprogrammed him to navigate mazes, showed him off to visitors, assisted in hardware repairs, etc. I lived in that lab for 3-4 years. I made friends there. MARVIN was one of them. I wanted to take MARVIN with me when I left. I would have paid (and still will) more than $180 to do so.

LabThug was created because people/things in that lab were being bothered by freshmen (or was it sophomores). So, we decided that a friendly "leave us alone" message would assist in keeping things on the up-and-up. So we made a sign, a copy of which makes up my homepage. It was at moment, within that lab, with MARVIN at my side, that LabThug was born.

And, the rest they say, is history.

Updating Firefox the other way

OK, I just got around to updating a PC to FF3. While they reached their total without my help, I had heard about problems.

Instead of doing the download thing, I tried the built-in update option. Actually, I tried the start-it-and-see-if-it-tells-you-a-new-one-is-available thing. I've gotten spoiled by that feature. Well, Firefox seemed to over look a few things for people trying to update this way.

It told me I was out of date, which was right; but told me to upgrade to 2.0.0.14. This was fine I thought, "Sometimes to jump major releases, you need to hop through the most recent point one." Of course, imagine my surprise when I restarted and got this:



Haha I thought, let's just try the update again. No dice!




So, apparently you can't update from 2 to 3 this way...at least yet.

Charleston Parks Conservancy

For those that didn't show ...

I attended a "bloggers event" today, at least that's what the computer printout said. It was in the upstairs of 39 Rue de Jean. Here's how it went down:

I could hear distant talking as I walked up the stairs. Suddenly a blonde in green came into view to welcome me. There were two others just like her. If they said names; I forgot, sorry. A quick scan of the crowd revealed some people I knew, which is always a good thing. Before I made it over to them, the host, Lyn Mettler introduced herself. She also pointed out the food and drinks.

The guy at the bar never told me his name; but when I told him I don't drink and asked for tea, he suggested water. I got a few lemons too, it helped to cover the Cl.

The spread was quite nice: grilled squash & zucchini with ranch, fried artichoke hearts stuffed with 3 types of cheese & marinara, fruits with chocolate sauce. Oh, and little bread chips. Those rocked.

From what I gathered, Lyn was introducing Jeff (or was it Jim...I'm really bad with names) from Charleston Parks Conservancy (CPC). This guy was teaming up with Paul (I'm pretty sure..that or Phil). There was also a guy from Brains on Fire. He was....damn, I have to start stocking up on that Ginkgo Bilbao stuff.

What CPC is trying to do is improve local awareness of the city's 120 parks. They are planning on doing this through their website and a host of other "grass-roots" efforts. In addition to picking 5 Park Angels, they want to create a wiki with each park in detail so users can share stories, etc. They are loosely affiliated with the City's Parks and Recreation Department. They also said they modeled themselves after the Central Park one.

There was also a small presentation hosted from a Mac. It had some sort of iPod hook-up to play relaxing Muzak.

There were questions, but I don't remember them now. Overall this project has a lot of potential, I hope it pans out -- we'll see what happens.

They gave out a copy of the press release, and had a few buttons (I kept the let's get dirty one). In addition, they gave away a crinum bulb. I'm thinking it would be fitting for me to plant it in the park across the street. We'll see how that goes.

Kyle and .... ooh, what was her name, were there handing out pins for thedigitel.com. From what I understand, it's a local news aggregator. Right now, they're just focusing on Charleston, although I'm sure their model could be extended to other cities quite easily.

And hey, guys and girls reading this. If you have the names straight, leave them in the comments :-$.

Why I love Linux

"smb_fill_super: missing data argument"

and

"CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22"

apparently mean the same thing:

"you need to `apt-get install smbfs`"

Gun Show

I've been told by others that I don't post enough. This is mostly because I'm a firm believer of not filling the Internet with worthless junk. I try to only post items that truly represent the essence/rage of LabThug. Today is a day for posting because it brought forth an item that is dear to LabThug's heart, this quarter's edition of The Land of The Sky Gun and Knife Show. To honor one of our nation's most fundamental rights, I spent way too much money to preserve your ability to "to keep and bear Arms."

For those that are curious, here is what was bought:



The First U.S. Navy Jack is the one thing that I am proud of purchasing most and it is dear to my heart for two reasons. First, I have family members that have served in the Navy. Second, it is a derivative of the Gadsden Flag, and bears the same motto, "Dont tread on me." While Mr. Gadsden was very much a true gentleman from the lovely state of South Carolina and one that is looked upon with honor by LabThug; it is this motto that is very much quintessential LabThug.

What you do is your right, and I really, truly, don't care what it is that you do. However, don't come into my Lab and tell me how I should do things, nor allow any of the stupid shit you do to override my own personal liberties. That is where I draw the line, and if I have to use what else is in that chair to redraw the line that existed, consider yourself warned.