Annual car inspection (aka state-mandated consumption)
Apr 17, 2012, 4:54p - Law
The way I like to think about taxes is that it's goverment-mandated homework. Just when you think you're done with school and you'll never have to do homework ever again, haha, think again. At least that's how it feels to me.
If you're lucky enough to own a car and live in the only state I know that likes to ... more »
Read comments (4) - Comment
Sachin
- Apr 17, 2012, 5:26p
Wow, that's super lame.
How much is the inspection itself?
When are you moving??
Dan P
- Apr 17, 2012, 6:22p
Hey dude -- interesting post. Don't forget about our lovely Smog Check system out here in CA
Glad to hear you're heading back out to CA. Bay area or otherwise?
Marlon
- Apr 18, 2012, 8:41p
Great read, thanks for sharing the gory details. Sounds like Mass is a fascist communistwealth. Come back to California soon, we love cracked tail lights!
nikhil
- Apr 19, 2012, 10:53a
The inspection itself is set by the state at $29, and almost every gas station or mechanic is licensed to do it.
Moving to Bay Area, but not for 1-2 more years... Gotta keep the worms happy until then!
Making DNA look simple (again)
Apr 10, 2012, 6:30p - Science
I recently got sick of doing science. After observing my own productivity and passion for science ebb and flow over the past few years, I've found that I live a roughly 6-month cycle: 6 months of scientific experiments, 6 months of something else (usually programming, often blogging, sometimes installing hardware floors and doing experiments on myself). It seems that when ... more »
Read comments (13) - Comment
Tron
- Jul 25, 2009, 10:27p
Thank you very much for making this available.
belle
- Aug 5, 2009, 7:16a
this is the best thing since sliced bread!! thank you just saved me thousands of hrs
dude,
- Nov 3, 2009, 6:33p
awesome.
jasonII
- Nov 12, 2009, 8:59a
Thanks, this works great. A few things though. Some of us work on large (18kb) genes. Is there any way to change the scale bar? Also, being able to indicate alternative spice events would be nice.
nikhil
- Nov 18, 2009, 9:29p
Thanks for the request jasonll. I've updated the graphic maker so you can now change the size of the scale bar, to be something more appropriate for your 18kb genes. Not sure what the convention is for indicating alternative splice sites - why not just make 2 separate gene models? I guess if there are several it would be nice to consolidate them into one image. If you have any ideas about what this would look like, lemme know.
nikhil
- Nov 19, 2009, 11:54p
Alan Marnett over at Benchfly.com asked me to write a blog post for them about the Exon-Intron Graphic Maker. It's just like this post, slightly revised. Storing the link here for safekeeping.
http://www.benchfly.com/blog/making-dna-look-simple/
omar
- Nov 29, 2009, 11:07p
dude this has advanced my research significantly
jasonII
- Feb 21, 2010, 8:40a
thanks for the scale bar modification. about the alternative splicing, i suppose it would be helpful if you could color them in. this would also be helpful to mark out certain functional domains easily. three or four colors would be wonderful and spice things up a bit!
siavash
- Apr 4, 2010, 6:10p
hi nikhil,
i also wanted to thank you for making this available. saved me so much time. also wanted to second jasonII's comment about other colors, for marking protein domains, etc.
but its wonderful, thanks a million.
Nick
- Nov 15, 2010, 7:09a
Thank you very much for this. I am an undergraduate doing a genetics research project and this has given me the ability to graphically show exon and intron positions the way I wanted to!
Pascal
- Feb 27, 2012, 7:34a
Great tool. What you also might want to consider is that UTRs can be across more than one exon. I think with the current options it is not possible to do that.
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 7:36a
Pascal, actually I think you can do what you want.
Just like with the protein-coding field, separate exons and introns in the UTR fields with commas, and you'll be all set. That way you can display a single UTR containing multiple exons and introns.
jsto
- May 18, 2012, 1:24a
Thanks a mil nikhil
I wonder if its possible to extend the image to show up and downstream regions?
Goodbye Facebook
Mar 9, 2012, 8:52p - Blog Update
While deactivating my account, it asks why.
I choose "I don't find Facebook useful."
It suggests "You may find Facebook more useful by connecting to more of your friends."
But I already have 716 "friends". The fact is, the more friends I have, the *less* useful I find Facebook, because there's more crap from random people sitting on my wall. ... more »
Read comments (6) - Comment
Josh
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:17a
Josh Meisel likes this
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:51a
Now I feel fulfilled.
Sachin
- Mar 10, 2012, 11:20a
Completely agree about Facebook.
Can't agree about LinkedIn though. If you are in the job market or just generally need to be connected to professional networks, it's great.
omar
- Mar 10, 2012, 3:30p
I too wanted to like tgis post. I deactivated my accoubt for a month a year or so ago. Was fulfilling. I didnt tell many ppl though and so someppl thought i had shunned them. I may give this a go again.
I agree on timeline. Inpossible to read.
For somw reason i dont get spelling correctiob in this textbox.
What is the photo app u refer to?
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 6:38p
Omar,
The photo app is called WallMe Lite. It's a wallpaper app that can loop through a set of photos and set them as your wallpaper. Best part is that you can login with Facebook and then it can show you all the photos where you or one of your friends is tagged. So I set it to show me photos of myself or Becca. You should check it out, it's great. I wanted an app like that for a while. Best part of Facebook for me was the photos, and this app puts them right in my face everyday, so I don't have to even go to Facebook. It's great (though of course it too can be improved).
Sachin,
Yeah, I understand that people on the job circuit get some value out of LinkedIn. I just find it a bit too job-focused for it to interest me. It has also bugged me in several ways:
1) It was one of the top results for me on Google, and I didn't like the impression that gave. I'm not looking for a job.
2) It has bugged me to write 'reviews' for people I've worked with, and then later I learned that these reviews weren't even requested by the person - the requests were auto-generated because *LinkedIn* wanted me to write a review. I'm not too interested in doing free work for companies.
3) I don't like that even though I want data about me to be free, LinkedIn will only give others access to this data if people pay (under certain circumstances). I don't think anyone needs to pay for my data, so I don't like that LinkedIn directly profits from data about me. I realize Facebook also makes money off my data, but it's indirect through advertising rather than charging the user. So access to my data remains free, as I want it to be.
Marlon
- Apr 18, 2012, 8:34p
"Also, the new Facebook Timeline sucks. 2 columns to view something that's linear (time)? Am I the only one who feels like my eyes are watching a ping-pong game? The big photo at the top is nice though."
Yes! Yes! No! I hate the photo at the top. I think Facebook is quickly going away, it used to be a place of hyperactivity, all kinds of relevant discussions from politics to whatever. Now it's all a ruined mush. The photo quality is total crap for sharing photos, there's pretty much no point to FB.
LinkedIn OTOH hasn't helped me get a job in years, but, the groups and discussions there are actually pretty helpful.
Btw, good luck deleting that Facebook account, they don't actually ever delete it, it remains alive indefinitely. Periodically you may get a request to activate it again.
The end of visual deprivation
Aug 2, 2011, 7:34a - Consciousness
It's the first day, morning, after opening my eyes after 7 days of visual deprivation. I opened my eyes last night, first in a dark room right after midnight, and then we lit a candle.
The first thing that's very striking, even in the morning now, is that everything that's blue looks extremely BLUE. Either I forgot what blue looked ... more »
Read comments (2) - Comment
Mike
- Feb 29, 2012, 10:53p
Wow, congrats on finishing the week! I have been considering doing the same thing and came across your page. How long did it take for your focus to go back to normal and the dizzy feeling to go away? Same day? Did you ever go back to that library to see if you could recognize anything?
nikhil
- Mar 10, 2012, 10:53a
Hi Mike,
Glad to hear you're also interested in doing something like this. If you do it, I'd love to hear about your experience.
My eye focusing was pretty bad right when I opened my eyes that night, but in the morning when I walked around my neighborhood it was pretty fine. The dizzy feeling also subsided by the middle of the next day or so.
One thing I didn't write about is that I got into a pretty serious bike accident when I biked into the lab that morning. I tried jumping a small curb which is normally no problem, but my timing was way off, I jumped too early, landed, and then my bike hit the curb. I flew over the handlebars and landed on my face and hands. I felt concrete scrape under my 2 front teeth. All in all, I was pretty banged up and chipped a bone in my wrist (first broken bone of my life). Everything healed up fine, but the point is that the hand-eye timing may take a while longer to get synchronized again.
I haven't gone back to the library yet. I should.
Visual deprivation: Days 6 and 7
Aug 1, 2011, 12:51p - Consciousness
[For background, see my first post on the experiment. This is a rough transcript of a dictation made on day 7.]
It's T minus 11 hours. After talking to Sachin yesterday [day 6], he had a good idea to slowly introduce light back to me eyes, like starting with a candle or another single light source and then maybe ... more »
No comments - Write 1st Comment
Visual deprivation: Day 5
Jul 30, 2011, 11:31p - Consciousness
[For background, see my first post on the experiment. This is a rough transcript of a dictation made on day 6.]
Today was an interesting day. Very nice weather. I'm still pretty lethargic, I took a 2 and a half hour nap, but so did Becca so I'm not sure if it's due to my experiment.
It was Jude's ... more »
No comments - Write 1st Comment
Visual deprivation: Day 4
Jul 29, 2011, 11:32p - Consciousness
[For background, see my first post on the experiment. This is a rough transcript of a dictation made on day 5.]
It's a beautiful day (referring to day 5). Right now I'm sitting in the sun, without a shirt on. It's quite nice. Boris (my tortoise) has emerged from his little borough. He didn't come out yesterday but he ... more »
Read comments (2) - Comment
Liz Dzeng
- Aug 6, 2011, 5:43p
Hey Nik! Wow, I'm so impressed that your doing this. It sounds incredibly hard with a huge amount of self discipline required. I could not even last an hour I bet if I tried. I've really enjoyed reading your posts which are so descriptive and introspective. You really should publish these findings in a scientific journal, so few experiments have been done on this. I'm really interested to read about your "unmasking"!
Niniane
- Aug 23, 2011, 1:14a
Are there any more entries??
Visual deprivation: Day 3
Jul 28, 2011, 10:09p - Consciousness
[For background see my first post on this experiment. This is a rough transcript of a dictation made on day 4.]
I sort of just feel like I'm a puddle of mud. I sort of just feel like I would behave if I'm sick, cause I don't really do much and I just lie around all day. So it ... more »
Read comments (1) - Comment
Yu-li
- Aug 6, 2011, 6:57a
I like your introspective description. You really did something hard. I don't want to try that even though I wonder how it feels like.
About construction of space, I think measure theory can be helpful. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_theory) Even without visual information, it must be possible to construct mental space of things as we have information on spatial order of things. I think what matters is (mental) metric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_%28mathematics%29).
Visual deprivation: Day 2
Jul 27, 2011, 11:13p - Consciousness
[For background see my first post about my blindness experiment. This post is a rough transcript of a dictation on day 3.]
Yesterday I had a little bit of an adventure. I went around the block by myself. It's amazing how much I do not walk in a straight line. With cars going by on the street, it's amazing ... more »
Read comments (5) - Comment
Kanika
- Aug 5, 2011, 4:40p
I don't know if you did this already - bit about three years ago a movie came out- beautiful movie about the blind- called BLACK by Sanjay leela bansali staring amitabh.... I must watch it!!!
Yu-li
- Aug 5, 2011, 7:41p
Interesting. Your experiment tells that normal sense of distance greatly depends on visual information.It must be specific to visual sense. Physically, other types of information are not very sensitive to distance I think (They are not linear. I mean, the strength of scent depends on both distance and quantity for example). I am sorry that my description is not very accurate.
Good luck!
Niniane
- Aug 5, 2011, 9:05p
This is an awesome story. I like all the details of how you're watching Teen Wolf, etc. It sounds domestic and pleasant.
mom
- Aug 12, 2011, 1:16p
good reading your descriptions and findings son. Yes, the Indian movie 'Black' suggested by Kanika is wonderful and maybe you would be able to appriciate it. Netflix should have it.
sakshi
- Aug 24, 2011, 8:45p
hmmm.. ive been out of the loop !!! just got back in.. another thumbs up for black !!!
Visual deprivation: Day 1
Jul 26, 2011, 11:07p - Consciousness
[All posts in this series have been backdated to the date they occurred. For background info on my visual deprivation experiment, see my first post on the topic. This post is a rough transcript of a dictation I made on day 2.]
I started Monday night (last night) at midnight. Becca taped stretched-out cotton balls over my eyes, couple pieces ... more »
Read comments (5) - Comment
Nicky
- Aug 5, 2011, 7:57a
Did a desire to rip off the eye mask emerge after a few days? Did it just take longer than food deprivation or isolation? I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the next post!
nikhil
- Aug 5, 2011, 10:07a
Nope, a desire to rip off the eyemask and open my eyes never emerged, certainly nothing like the desire to eat after food deprivation or the desire to breathe after air deprivation.
Howard
- Aug 5, 2011, 10:53a
well, those are interesting comparisons because one could argue that the other two forms of deprivation you use for example are tied to very real needs of survival on a biological level. While food is a little different because given your survival school mean experiment you weren't lacking nutrition just variety and craving. With air deprivation, that's entirely different, no air = no life and your body starts to react involuntarily. so the one easy conclusion is that vision is not tied to survival instincts
nikhil
- Aug 5, 2011, 1:05p
Howard, I completely agree. I also think it's interesting to think about the brain basis for each of these deprivations. Vision is believed to rely mostly on the outer parts of the brain (the cortex), whereas more basic body functions like breathing and perhaps even hunger lie deeper in the brain. Maybe it's these different brain locations that contribute to the different class of feelings that each type of deprivation generates. So maybe inner brain deprivations generate the intrinsic or visceral feeling to stop, while outer brain deprivations don't.
Yu-li
- Aug 5, 2011, 7:28p
Hi, I've waited for your post! Your experiment is so interesting. Some ideas come to my mind.
1) You could feel sleepy because of conditioning. The sense of darkness might be associated with sleepiness.
2) You also could feel tired because of mental resource reallocation. (It's a hypothesis). I mean, in some sense, you had depended on visual feedback in order to control your movement. Now you have to decide your movement without some information, so you need to compensate the loss with other types of information. Your body and brain could have been working very hard subconsciously.
3) I think some portion of emotional stability(?) can be explained by decreased quantity of information. I mean, it might not be specific to visual sense. For example, if you cannot smell, you would feel quite indifferent to food.
That's what I think. Good luck!
|