Between 2004 and 2008 I used to work for a lab of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where scientists crystallised proteins to be able model them. Crystallization is a neat way of lining them up perfectly. This is necessary because they are so small that if you measure just one of them, you don’t get a signal. If you put a few precisely in a row, their signals add up and you start to see things.
Crystallizing proteins isn’t very easy though. They used mainly solutions of salt and other solvents, but the whole thing was basically a trial and error process. They had plates with wells lined up in rows, each with a slightly different solution. Robots would periodically take lots of pictures of them, so that the scientists could see which ones made progress. Seeing a crystal form was usually reason for cake.
We had an algorithm that could recognize interesting artefacts, but scoring these images is typically something that the human brain does a much better job of than computers. You don’t even need to be a trained scientist. I did some of them too. A short instruction was enough to be able to tell what’s what.
I had to think about this when I stumbled upon the New Horizons Ice Hunters web site. New Horizons is a probe on its way to Pluto. When it gets there in 2015 it will return awesome pictures back to us, just like the Cassini probe is doing now at Saturn. But it won’t stay there (obviously – it doesn’t have the means to slow down). After Pluto it will continue toward the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid belt outside Neptune’s orbit, filled with icy objects called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).
The problem is, these KBOs have to be identified first. And like recognizing the crystals, that is something that humans are better at than computers. Ice Hunters lets the visitor identify these distant worlds of ice, thus helping out the scientists. It’s really fun (and addictive) to do, and not that hard. In 38 images I found 19 of them, and I just got started.
There is a tutorial video and some text on where the images come from. You are presented with small square images, on which you can click to indicate where the KBOs are. There are lots and lots of images to be scored, so there is a lot of work to do. Every image is scored by a few people, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes. And before you can start, you need to sign up, so that they can attach your name to your results.
This one is not really an eye-opener, but I use this blog to record and archive stuff I find out at some point, so here’s a post about getting NetBeans Platform Applications use GTK instead of Metal.
Since the Swing Application Framework (SAF) has been deprecated and developing NetBeans Platform Applications (NPA) is the new and better way to do these things, I’ve bought a good book on the subject, and am quite satisfied with the way Java desktop applications are to be developed these days.
However, under Linux, Swing applications default to the ugly Metal widget set:
Metal widget set. Click to zoom.
On the command line and using SAF it is in fact pretty easy to make Swing use the GTK widgets. This way Java applications get a native look and feel under Linux. With NPA however, there is no right place to insert a few lines of code to do this at startup.
To make NetBeans itself use the GTK widgets, I always start the IDE like this:
Since NetBeans is itself an NPA, I figured the trick would be to specify this option somewhere in the application’s configuration. I googled around a bit and found the answer here. The trick is to add a single line to the project.properties file, which can be found inside the Important Files folder within the NPA project. That line is:
And now, under KDE4, my application looks like this:
GTK widget set. Click to zoom.
Not exactly a KDE4 look-and-feel, but I have lots of applications (Gimp, GQView, LibreOffice) that use GTK so it still looks native on my desktop, and GTK is a lot prettier than Metal.
Now why it is a good idea to write desktop applications instead of web applications, especially in Java, is something that Geertjan Wielenga talks about on his blog. Well worth the read.
According to the Geek Zodiac, I am an Undead, since I was born in 1976. I am apparently soulful, transcendental and know the value of all life. I am also haunted, tormented and have difficulty connecting to humanity.
Obviously, this is utter nonsense. I am clearly a Robot: law-abiding, dedicated and logical as well as stubborn, intractable and cold. But apparently I was born in the wrong year for that.
A few days ago I had a nice discussion in a commenting thread on Wired, in response to an article about how uncertain the future of space flight is, now that the Space Shuttles are being mothballed.
When I was little, in the early eighties of the last century, I remember being told that the newly developed Shuttles would be the next big step in space flight technology. While previous rockets were disposable craft, the Shuttles were reusable. They could be launched over and over again with little effort. A whole fleet of these magnificent machines was going to be built and access to space would become cheaper. Getting into space was going to be routine. The James Bond movie Moonraker, from that time, depicts these ambitions when it shows us five shuttles being launched simultaneously from one location, after which they travel to a space station in high orbit.
Five shuttles docked at a space station, about 1:40 into the movie.
Obviously, it didn’t happen this way. NASA built only a handful of Shuttles and they did not live up to their promises at all. They were clumsy vehicles, none of them able to reach a decent orbit. At the same time, they were immensely costly, which left too few resources for other programs. That situation seems to be coming to an end now, finally.
Still, many Americans are very sad to see them being phased out. I can understand an emotional response. After all, they look pretty cool and nobody else has anything but rockets. Better yet, the Russian Shuttle program could be seen as failed[1]. But when I think of what NASA should be proud of, it is not the Shuttle. It’s the Mars rovers and all those space probes, buzzing throughout the solar system, doingfabulousscience. Even the Apollo-program wasn’t more than a show, albeit a spectacular one, but it did prevent NASA from doing more useful things.
Today, organizations are starting to launch craft into orbit to make a profit, and NASA is stopping with spending money on costly ineffective programs like Apollo or the Shuttles. In other words, rockets are launched for the right reasons. I can only conclude that these times are a lot less uncertain for space flight than in the five decades behind us.
As for the use of humans in space: humans should go into space for useful work that machines can’t do. Otherwise it will never be anything but a useless show, and never be sustainable.
[1] Though it didn’t: Gorbachev cancelled it before it ruined the Russian space program. ↩
I got a new phone. It’s my first real smart phone, it has Android and two CPU cores. I like it. It’s an LG Optimus 2x and it looks like this:
LG Optimus 2x
I like it for having a Linux kernel, a big screen, a 3.5 mm earphone jack, convenient volume buttons, a slick design and because I can greatly expand its usefulness by installing apps. It’s not become a lifestyle though. The first Saturday after I got it, while waiting outside of a dressing room for someone to try on some new piece of clothing, I did not check my messages or Facebook wall. That’s not product dissatisfaction, I’m just really in control.
So I wanted to make a list of all the different cell phones I’ve owned. ‘Owned’ being off course a relative term (albeit decreasingly so in each case), since I got each one for free (also relative, increasingly, also inversely correlated with ‘owned’) with a subscription that would last for two years, after which the phone was more than fully paid.
The `Swing’ was a very popular phone in the Netherlands at the time. It is the only one I used with a pre-paid subscription. My service provider was KPN-owned Hi, which was targeted at young people. I got the phone in January 2000, while away from home for the entire month. I remember the first thing I tried to find out about it was how to turn off the high-pitched beep at every key press. Apart from the extensible antenna for noticeably better reception I don’t remember much else. Its functionality was limited to making and receiving calls, text messaging, name/number storage and an alarm clock. But it was as cool a gadget as I’ve ever had.
Nokia 6210
When I got a new phone, I sold the Pocketline Swing, including its phone number. And for good reason. The law that enables you to take your phone number with you when switching service providers didn’t exist yet, and if I stayed with Hi I didn’t have a lot of options choosing my next phone. So I switched to Ben, which gave me a Nokia 6210.
Noka 6210
Also targeted at young people, Ben was the übercool brand of the time. I believe the first name of the guy who founded it was Ben, and in Dutch, “ben” also translates to “I am”, which provided for lots of subtle advertising possibilities. They were growing, but their coverage wasn’t very good when I first got this phone. I lived in Groningen then, and I remember only having reception in the down-town area. As soon as I crossed a bridge over the enclosing canal, the connection was lost. Ben was bought by T-Mobile in 2002 as their way to get access to the Dutch market. They closed down the brand, but reinstated it in 2008.
A Nokia 6210 from Ben was what everybody in my demographic had. Apart from calling and text messaging, the user could compose his very own ring tones. I remember using the opening theme of Shostakovich’s Sixth string quartet as my ring tone, because we were rehearsing that at the time. And off course there was the very addictive game of Snake. I got pretty good at it. Obviously, because everyone was.
