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I've always assumed that the purple house was built in 1881. Why I assumed this I don't know. Because the house is the only family style residence in a very commericial part of central square, I was under the impression that it was still here for...  

I finally got Kirby's new pack in the mail. I had ordered the smallest back pack the Wolf Packs carried, the small. Well, the pack I got was a small, but it was huge! The previous pack we owned could only fit 3 beers on either side...  

The beginning of July started off like christmas. Heather surprised me with a completely unexpected gift. Pretty damn schnazzy, I think. Too bad I am the only person I know who likes the stuff. I also ordered via Amazon a Garmin Etrex Vista...  

Sorry about the lack of updates. I have been real busy with work lately. Things just don't seem to be going the way they should. Hopefully, things will start going smoothly again and I will have more time to update the web page. I did update...  

Shuyan Chen is a fellow post-doc in our lab. She just got back from a trip to Yellowstone National park. She is also a very good photographer. I helped her set up her images online and thought that I would link to them. Now if...  

Heather and I went to Cancun at the end of May. Today, a month and a half later, we received some of the post cards we mailed from Mexico. Apparently, a buck fifty in postage (10.5 pesos) gets your mail sent via the express donkey....  

And therein lies the dilema....  

Here is a picture of the landlord's outdoor bar. What's wrong with this picture?...  

I finally got off my arse and set up a proper backend for the website. Now the pages are generated dynamically using a perl CGI script. All the entries are stored in a MySQL database. There should not be any visible changes. But it means that I...  

Heather and I visited Crane beach this weekend. The beach is touted as New Enlgand's largest white sand beach, with over 4 miles of beach. I admit, that the beach was very pretty, however there were a few major problems. The first being the water temp...  

As you have probably noticed, I have not updated the site in quite awhile. I was quite shocked to find that I am still getting several hundred hit a day. This is the reason. Note the search term. Needless to say, I am in quite...  

Given recent events with the litigious bastards at SCO regarding linux, I thought this was a damn funny Google Bomb...  

My folks recently went on a cruise. I think (hope) I may be adopted. :) ...  

The apartment below us has been vacant for quite awhile now, but there has been a sudden flurry of realtors showing the apartment. For some reason realtors with master keys tend to be curious and peak inside apartments they have absolutely no right to be in! "Oh..I didn't...  

I hope (if anyone is actually reading) you may have noticed that the webpage is finally being hosted at a machine called www.macalpine.org instead of shiner.mit.edu/~davidm. It took quite a lot of tweaking to get an authorative nameserver set up to point the entire domain at one...  

I have a finely tuned .procmailrc file for filtering all of my email. Spam goes to spam, mailing lists go to respective folders etc. Only a select few messages make it to my inbox. I also have it set up to read out loud the...  

This really pisses me off. If a file has *ever* been accessible via http or even resided in a directory accessible via http, you can assume that google has seen it. You can not hide anything. You may not think your page is linked to from...  

Off to mexico for a week in may. Finally booked the trip, we will be staying at the Moon Palace. Now we just have to find a strong sunscreen....  

Lately, the members of the Bell lab have become obsessed with the game of darts. We now have a dartboard in the lab and are busy practicing darts instead of pushing back the frontiers of science. Here is a motivational clip of a perfect nine dart...  

Seems exhibitionists have found away to push images of themeselves on unsuspecting Ebay purchasers. They even have word for this act -- Reflectoporn...  

My folks have reached the number one (#1) spot on Yahoo! with their vacation photos. Way to go! ...  

Heather has perfected the margarita:

• 1 cup tequila (Jose Cuervo Gold)
• 1 cup triple sec
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 cups of ice

One of our computers at work was compromised by hackers. Not sure how long they have been there. Looked like multiple groups had been using the computer for a playground. At least one entity had the proverbial root access. Not good. Another entity was just...  

A flurry of recent hits from the west coast. It seems that Milan's younger brother Jedidjah has put a link from his web site, Du Verger, to here. [warning: liberal/left content, but fun to read none the less] I am offically part of the www...  

Damn. Cheap web cam I was using for the realtor cam died. Only outputs black frames. The 50' ethernet cable that runs from the router to the study got pinched in the door frame and now drops packets like a sieve (unusable). Yes, if I hadn't...  

www.macalpine.org has gone global! People from 63 different countries have visited my site. I would especially like to thank my vistor from Kazakhstan. I don't imagine there are many computers in Kazakhstan and to direct what must be a sizeable part of the country's computational...  

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...  

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...  

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...  

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.......  

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...  

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...  

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

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. ...  

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...  

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...  

After 7 days of laying on a cancun beach we had to return to sadly return to Boston. More to come later, but for now the pictures are up in the images section....  

Finally saw 'Kill Bill vol. I' with Hrod last nite. We went to the local blockbuster and rented the movie along with disc one of CSI season 2. As an aside, I noticed that blockbluster is going to begin a netflix like business model at the end of...  

Found the site 'How much is inside' through memepool. These are some dedicated people with a great sense of humor and *way* too much time on their hands. My faovrite is the trailblazer saga....  

Please help settle an ongoing discussion in the apartmentlet. If a typical oninion (yellow,spanish etc) has sprouted (small green shoots) should it be used? Apartmentlet dweller A believes that an onion with sprouts is still an onion and that we eat green onions all the time which have...  

The web's definitive site on dehydrated spinach. How many anchor links will it take for this to be reflected in google? ...  

It was Hrod's birthday this week so I took her to Morton's Steakhouse to celebrate. Ya gotta love a girl who likes to eat steak. The food was excellent. Heather had a beefsteak tomato salad for an appetizer followed by a large fillet smoothered in mushrooms...  

Added more pictures from our trip to Moody Gardens' in Galveston. It was nice, but probably not worth $40 entrance fee. The fee did include an imax showing. We saw a 3D imax about the rainforet. The 3D in imax format was absolutely amazing. ...  

Heather and I have started a 'rooftop' herb garden outside of our living room window. Currently growing: basil, mint, chives, taragon, rosemary, thyme, parsley, jalepenos and tomatoes. The most recent additions are the jalepenos and tomatoes. The tomato plant already has some flowers and its first...  

I still have two gmail invitations left -- anybody want one? First come, first serve....  

Hrod and I took advantage of a beautiful day to roller blade along the Minuteman bikeway. We rented inline skates at Bedford and skated down to Lexington. About 4 miles each way. The most important thing to note is that it is uphill from...  

I finally updated my 'What are people looking for?" list The favorite is still 'Nice Ass', followed by 'MacAlpine' and 'Sharon Stone'. An interesting addition was 'Lake MacAlpine' and finally Heather will be pleased to know that someone searched for 'hot heather'...  

Thanks to Jayson for pointing out this headline on CNN. Oops seems they have already corrected it...good thing I made an archive of the original....  

Chinese in, English out. Met some old friends of mine today, Hon Ren, Mike (junior) and Ellen Chao along with their daughter Jessica. Jessica is three and aside from being quite cute is also bilingual. Mike and Ellen speak to her in chinese, yet she only likes...  

Damn! I've been displaced on google for the search term MacAlpine. Can you spot the sites that don't belong? Seems someone has been spamming hundreds of various blogs with these sites linked from their signature. Although these don't contain the term 'MacAlpine' the linking signature does. ...  

Happy 4th of July, a day late. Heather and I took some great photos of the Boston fireworks display. Our vantage point was the rooftop of the biology building at MIT. That is building 68 for those who prefer the MIT naming system. Also...  

Sorry for the lack of posts, I've discovered the family of IPAs from Dogfish Head Brewery. Three excellent and very hoppy beers (or "blachgh, that's bitter" according to hrod). The names of the beer refer to the amount of time that they are hopped during the...  

Thought I would plug Milan's little brother Jed's bid for the school board in Santa Barbra, California. You can watch his campaign unfold over the next few months. ...  

I stumbled on the Puritan Beef Co, a wholesale distributor of prime and choice beef, down by Haymarket in Boston. Prime NY strip loins are 5.27/lb and prime fillet are 8.79/lb. The catch is you have to buy a whole subprimal. (10-15 lbs). Seventy five and change yielded 13 1.25-1.5" NY...  

Heather and I made a pilgrimage to Burlington, VT for the Vermont brewer's association beer festival. We took quite a few nice pictures along the way. Heather wins the prize though for this picture of lake Champlain at sunset. Speaking of photos, I was...  

BeerNet is now 'live'. I've decided to conduct a social experiment regarding WiFi leaching. Instead of securing my wireless access point, I have left it open to share my unused bandwidth. To remind people of this fact, I have set up a transparent proxy using squid...  

BeerNet has been live now for almost 2 months and I still have not received any beer. At least 4 computers are routinely using my bandwith more than 5 gigs worth in the last month alone! This is ok, but where is the beer? I have now...  

While working on the computer that runs BeerNet, I accidentally spilled a beer on the keyboard. Oops. I thought all was fine, but the next day half the keys failed to respond when pressed. Damn. Used this as an excuse to buy a wireless keyboard and...  

Heather asked me to install a shelf in our small computer room so I would have a place to store all my junk (CDs, manuals etc). On the surface this request sounded suspiciously like work, however after some thought I realized I would be able to go to...  

Heather and I added some new photos to the image gallery. These include our trip apple picking at the Carver Hill orchard, a nice hike along the battle road trail(one of the starting points of American revolution) on a beautiful new england fall day,...  

Have you updated to firefox 1.0 yet? There is simply no excuse to use the old (over 3 years since last major update) and virus prone microsoft internet explorer.

One new feature in firefox 1.0 is the 'live bookmarks'. See the orange radio wave...  

You may have noticed that the computer that runs this site was down yesterday. A hacker broke into the computer and gained root access and installed the 'SucKit' root kit. Luckily, MIT actively monitors their network, and noticed the 'fingerprint' of a compromised system within minutes and shut...  

Instead of writing a review that is due in just a few weeks, I've found a new distraction to help me procrastinate. That distraction is Blender a 3D modeling software package. Blender is a very high end graphics package used by animation and modeling studios that has...  

Ater 3 months of operation no beer donations were received. Thus, we can conclude that WiFi leachers are morally inept, and would prefer to pilfer than leave a trivial donation. All internet traffic is now directed to this static page. ...  

Lots going on here at work. My Drosophila chromosome 2L replication paper finally came out in 'Genes and Development' this month. I just finished writing a review paper for 'Chromosome Research'[bastard ie only site], which entailed a lot of AOPD (analyzing other peoples data) --...  

First mouse infestation at the apartmentlet. Haven't seen a mouse since the days at 4 Blanche st. A week ago we noticed that our brand new bag of sandwich buns had a hole in the bag and in a bun. Assumed the damage had from a mouse...  

After watching the death toll in south east asia climb to mind numbing numbers over the last few days, Heather and I have made a donation to the red cross disaster relief fund (Amazon has a 1-click donation set up). I've never really felt the need...  

...  

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...  

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. ...  

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....  

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...  

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...  

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

Pharmer  [0]

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...  

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...  

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...