MacAlpine.org

Done. I finally submitted a paper detailing the last few years of my life in the Bell lab. Aside from the science, I’m proud of this manuscript for two reasons — first, I had to develop computational skills (perl, SQL, R, etc). Second, I cut the micro$oft cord and only used free open source software for the data analysis as well as writing the manuscript and preparing figures. The boss seems to think I hindered myself by using ‘archaic non-windowed tools’, but I don’t think he realizes the power of some of these ‘archaic’ software tools. The learning curve is steep, but well worth it. I made extensive use the of the following software packages: perl, mysql, R, vim, latex and bibtex.

Hrod and I went to MIT’s spring festival concert, featuring Slick Rick and Live, this weekend. Surprisingly, there were less people there than we expected so we were able to get quite close to the stage. Needless to say, Live put on quite the show, and Hrod was happy as she owns all of their CDs. Slick Rick was another matter all together. Picture a hard core gangsta rapper just recently released from jail (attempted murder) playing to a small crowd of overeducated white kids. It was culture shock and I’m not sure who was more shocked. Not to mention Slick’s last hit (before jail) was in 1985, the same year most of the MIT kids were born.

When you’ve kicked milan’s ass in darts all week. Not even close. I also took this picture of a ‘Robin Hood’. Fear me.

As the proud parent of a beagle, this just doesn’t surprise me.

Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with Google rank. My domain macalpine.org has been bouncing up and down within the first several pages of google results for the search term ‘macalpine’ (Currently #7). The number one site is a web page for the professional musician Tony MacAlpine. I’m fine with this, what irks me is that the number two site is ‘macalpine.com’ (notice I didn’t include a hyperlink) which is an empty place holder site! I also stumbled across a web page of my younger cousin, Patrick MacAlpine, at position number 180. So for the next few months, I’m going to track the progress of these websites in realtime (every 3 hours) using the Google API and some shell scripting.

New Englanders should not be allowed to operate motor vehichles. Period. They can’t drive, they can’t park and they can’t design highways even after spending billions. Boston is home to multiple 5,6 and 7 way intersections (’ya wanna bear left at the right most left turn’ is common when asking for directions). Not to mention the fact that there is not a single ‘left turn’ lane in the entire Commonwealth!

I’ve been told that a blog should be interactive. This is trial run #1 at an interactive forum. Now if only my 6 loyal readers would leave comments….

Whipped up a hack of perl script to roll through my log files looking for referrals from the search engines. Multiple people have found my site searching for the generic term ‘mexicans’. I’m not sure what is more frightening, that people search for really stupid generic terms or that they wade through hundreds of results before finding a single picture on my site that has the word ‘mexicans’ in the caption. Sharon Stone was by far the most popular search…again the link to my site was the five hundredth and such result. People are very very patient! And then there are the mysterious searches for ‘macalpine apartments’ — Do I possibly have slum lords for relatives?

This Easter sunday Heather and I went for a hike in Hale reservation (about 10 miles southwest of Boston). The purpose of this hike was two fold, one to get the hell outta lab and two to find a geo cache. Geocaching is a sport? where you hide some small trinkets and a log book in the middle of nowhere and then you post GPS coordinates to the location on the internet. The goal is to then find the hidden cache using only your gps. It sounds cheesy, but it is really alot of fun. The best part is you get off the beaten path and explore some really nice places that you might not have ever visted on your own. This weekend was supposed to be a simple 1.5 mile in to the geo cache, 1.5 mile out. Ha! Seems there are hundreds of trails in Hale reservation and not a single one of them headed off in the direction we needed to go. Lots of backtracking and walking in circles. When we finally found the coordinates of the site, we couldn’t find the damn cache. Very frustating. All in all we walked 4.9 miles instead of 3 and came out empty handed.

Bought a new wireless router from netgear. Seems to work fine, at least all the computers are talking again. Right now, at home, I have a desktop computer, a laptop, tivo and an xbox. All are wired and all are running linux. Still irked that my D-link router died. Note to self, need to hide wires before hrod gets even more irked.