Pill Identification

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MacAlpine Home Page

This is the home page of David MacAlpine. This site is intended to be a running commentary on things I find interesting/useful. The page contains only valid html and css (lifted shamelessly from the css/edge. The scrolling effects and hi-lighting links on the menubar are all done with CSS and HTML -- no javascript. Unfortunately, Microsoft Explorer for windows has a broken implementation of CSS1 and scrolling effects are not quite right. If you came to this site using Microsoft Explorer for Windows, I would suggest that you use a web browser that correctly supports the published HTML and CSS standards.   [Comments (6)]

I have finally completed my job search.  As soon as I sign and return the offer letter I will update this post with where I will be hanging my pippettes for the forseeable future.

For my fellow MIT postdocs who are beginning to think about next years job search.  I have put together a page of job search materials that may be useful as you begin the process.  This link is only accessible from the MIT.EDU domain.  Good luck! 

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I'm now officially looking for my first real job. I'm applying for faculty positions all over the country. I've implemented a google map to track my process. Green are places I've applied, Red are places that I've been rejected and Blue are those places where I've been asked to interview.

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I thought I would give an update on pharmer.org the fastest growing pill identification resource on the web.  Yes, a blatant plug for my friend's website.  Pharmer finally cracked the front page of google after about 5 months in the sandbox.  Strangely, pharmer has slipped to 6 on MSN and even worse disappeared completely from Yahoo. 

Site	Search Engine Traffic	Unique IP Addresses
Pharmer.org	4926	5566
MacAlpine.org	355	2178
Milandevries.org	160	724
Chromosome2L.mit.edu	10	62
Devries2004.org	5	51

 

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Just returned from vacation in Cancun (again).  Heather and I had a great time.  I even had a chance to play some golf.  Having not played for a few years, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I still have game. 

The pictures are in the usual place.  Anybody have any idea what the hell this creature is? 

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A nice day here in boston, so Hrod and myself went for a walk to Harvard Sq.  We thought it might be fun to buy a frisbee and throw it around in the park.... We found frisbees for sale in a neighborhood sporting  good store -- for $15 dollars a piece!  Yes a plastic frisbee.  WTF???  But wait it gets worse, for $15 you have your choice of several different weights of frisbee.  I didn't even know frisbees came in different weights.  Do I get the 200 gram ultimate frisbee or the 165 gram freestyle.  I don't like to make complex decisions like this especially for a $15 piece of plastic.   So now I have to learn all about frisbees on the internet so I can make an informed decision.
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I know, a lack of updates lately, but I've added a new feature.  A clever js utility to aid in comment input.  Part of the problem with our homebrew system was that you needed to encode the comments in html to make things such as lists and paragraph breaks. 

Now that is a thing of the past!  I've installed WYSIWYG text editor for formating the comments.  I hope this will make everyone happy and lead to more comments.  Thanks to milos for nagging me to update the blog.

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For xmas Heather gave me a Global Chef's knife Very sharp. In fact, it is the sharpest knife I've ever owned. To be honest heather is the one who uses the knife the most, and she is also the one who has suffered the most injuries. Aside from slicing through finger nails and the ends of her finger tips, last night she nearly decapitated her index finger while slicing a red pepper. Luckily, despite being a very deep cut, the cut was not very long. No stiches, but it will most likely leave a nice scar. Consider this our endorsement for global knives.  [Comments (5)]

An update for Jed and all the others who helped promote www.pharmer.org. Pharmer.org is doing quite well, over 30 registered users and the forums are beginning to role. Right now pharmer.org is #2 for 'pill identification' at msnsearch, #29 at yahoo and a disappointing #153 at google. However, for 'winter cold' at google, pharmer is #6 out of 12 million. Still can't figure that one out. As far as shear volume of traffic from the various search engines (over the last 5 days):

Site	Search Engine Traffic	Unique IP Addresses
Pharmer.org	508	840
MacAlpine.org	316	801
Milandevries.org	102	297
Chromosome2L.mit.edu	8	8
Devries2004.org	5	9

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A new web site has joined our world wide web. Pharmer.org is a non-profit site dedicated to providing free and unbiased information regarding pills and medicine. The site specializes in pill identification and also provides pill imprints for many common drugs.

Ok, the site is run by a friend who has a wacky obsession with identifying pills. As you can tell by the mission statement they are pretty damn passionate about pill identification, they even have resources and forums for pill identification. To help get her started it would be great if any of you out there with access to web sites could throw them an anchor link with the term "pill identification". Unfortnuately, there are lots of spammy off-shore pharmacy sites that also use that keyword, so the more links the better. Here is yet another resource for pill identification

Also, if not too much to ask -- It would be great if my 3 loyal readers would sign up for accounts at Pharmer.org to help get the forums started. A prize will be awarded for the most unique pill identification story submitted to the forums. Don't have a pill that needs identification? No problem, I've hacked up a short program (takes a few seconds to load, sorry :( ) to generate a random list of 10 pills and their imprint. Don't like the ones you see on the page? Then simply reload the page! To get you started, here is a sample post at a competing web site. The responding poster with well over 1700 posts is part of the pharmer team.   [Comments (2)]

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