I have to admit as a scientist I love to see graceful solutions to any problem. Prof. Josh Silver at the University of Oxford has come up with just such a brilliant simple solution that any scientist who understands index of refraction will say: “Ahhh… yes!” about. Prof. Silver has made plastic glasses with adaptive lenses for third world countries. In third world countries to get glasses right now you have to either already know (by magic) your prescription, or try and somehow happen across an optometrist (and you thought it was just about affording a roof over your head!). Unfortunately, optometrists don’t grow on trees in third world countries, and so you’re pretty much out of luck.

Enter the “dial a prescription” solution of Prof. Josh Silver’s. With his glasses you simply turn a few dials which push plungers in or out of a syringe attached to each lens. These syringes hold a fluid which has the same index of refraction as a polymer film which flexes under pressure (positive and negative pressure). This pressure of course will bow out or bow in the surface of the “lens” (which is fixed on the edges to a certain thickness). How to know your prescription? Simple- is it clearer or not? [Much like the old A or B, A or B, A or B, 1 or 2, 1 or 2 hassle we all go through at the optometrist's office- but cut out all that binary testing... just dial it in or out- bam, there's your prescription- in fact, it's fractions of diopters even- so it's much more analog than the current system.] Pure brilliance. Such a simple problem to a complex issue.

The impact to those who can’t see? Huge! I suggest it’s almost as huge as teaching someone how to farm. People are illiterate because they can’t see things clearly enough to learn how to read or write. Prof. Silver’s solution has the possibility of changing all of that.

So, my hat is off to him as a scientist- excellent work, and much needed work!!

Here are some links to the adaptive lenses:

• Guardian: Inventor’s 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world’s poorest see better
• Prof. Josh Silver’s Organization: Center For Vision In The Developing World

And here are some talks that highlight these new adjustable lens glasses:

If you’ve been moved by this simple idea, consider sending a donation to them to help support vision for those around the developing world: Donate.

Well, here’s the fix… it turns out that Leopard uses launchd to set the display. So, the old method of launching MATLAB was to set the display to 0.0, but this will fail after the first instance, hence the bug. What you can do is simply remove this line from the startup script in matlab (located within the startup application contents).

The line that was:

$SHELL -c 'bin/'$ARCH'/setsid bin/matlab -desktop -display :0.0 &'

should now be:
$SHELL -c 'bin/'$ARCH'/setsid bin/matlab -desktop &'

Once I changed that, everything started up fine!

ps- you will know you have this problem if you look at your console log immediately after launching MATLAB and it says something like:
6/29/10 9:03:34 AM [0x0-0x78078].StartMATLAB[23469] Warning: Unable to open display :0.0, MATLAB is starting without a display.

Speaking of our own struggles, what most of the public often does not get a feel for is the absolute devotion, almost to insanity, towards finding the solutions we are looking for. Many of the comments by the graduate’s spouses touched home for me. In each of the graduates followed in this film I saw bits of myself. One thing however, that is different, is the struggle for the specific protein structure. Often that struggle is a lot less well-defined. In this situation, you either get the structure of AMPK or you don’t. I guess it’s a lot like their attempts at creating crystals. Sure, you get crystals, but if they don’t have a periodic structure, you’ll never get diffraction. In my situation, the variables in our studies are very difficult to control, and so often one doubts one’s work solely on the question of reproducibility. Many scientists struggle with this same situation. People think that doing things like “measuring temperature” is a very easy thing. In reality, it is a very very difficult thing. Especially in a vacuum. That question just arose the other day in discussing our science with a new undergraduate assistant. As we talked more and more on the difficulties of measuring temperature we all saw his eyes grow larger in wonder. The simplest of problems can often be the most difficult. How accurate do you need to measure it? What standard will you use? Do you believe your thermocouple, your thermometer, or your pyrometer? What if the emissivity of the surface changes?

This is the life of a scientist. And the film below attempts to capture the lives and struggles of a few graduate students who are hoping for a career in science. It’s a struggle. But, you have heard me say that enough. To learn more about it I strongly suggest you watch this film. For the graduate student, I warn you: you’ll see yourself in this. For those who aren’t scientists: this may end up being a comedy, and I kindly refer you to Marg Simpson’s commentary on graduate students posted earlier in this blog.

My congratulations to Thirteen for doing such an excellent job on this one hour film. They didn’t have a lot of time to share with you everything regarding our struggles and achievements, but they distilled it quite well in the time available.

This first review has a time-constraint- in that it is a planner review. Equology is a new eco-friendly planner that Quo Vadis has just started offering. The recycled content list is quite impressive- 88% recycled materials, and 100% post-consumer recycled paper. It’s certified, processed chlorine free, and FSC recycled. Heck, it’s even manufactured using biogas! This isn’t the end of the impressive details- read on to hear my experience using it with Fountain Pens! [recycled paper shrieks in terror here]

When I saw the opportunity to grab one of these planners to review, I jumped at it. Why? Because as a fountain-pen user, I frequently am struggling with the quality of paper used in various books (planners being one of those that sticks with you for a year). My experience has been, quite simply, horrible with recycled papers. For some reason, the majority of recycled paper manufacturers just can’t make a paper that takes fountain-pen ink to save their lives. If there ever was a company that could, I bet that Quo Vadis could.

But, first, let’s talk about the planner. I have the Minister, which is 6.25 x 9.5 inches large. I find for me this is a great size- open it provides close to a full page (8.5×11). When closed it’s a smaller size that I can carry with me almost everywhere (at least where I’d carry a textbook or a Moleskine (speaking of which, I hope to have a new review up soon- I’m no longer a Moleskine lover).

When I first held the Equology planner the first thing I noticed was the texture of the cover. The best way I can describe it, although this isn’t perfect, is a tight suede feel. It’s not the same as suede at all, but just like how suede wants to be touched, so does this great cover! And it’s held up to knocking around in my bag for a month now without a single problem. Seems to be tough!

The other wonderful thing about the Minister is that when it’s opened fully, it gives you a full week view and yet still has space for priorities and notes around the full week. In fact, fully open, it’s darned close to the old Stephen Covey Seven Habits of Highly Successful People’s planner I used to swear by. Covey had a number of things right in that planner, and I see them mirrored here. In particular, the ability to see your full week at a glance gives you the opportunities to plan ahead. If I so much as have my head down for a half-hour in my work, I forget what I need to put in my bag at 4:30 for the evening or next morning’s work. So, that full-week view is a great reminder of up-coming meetings and deadlines.

Quo Vadis was also smart- they didn’t place rigid lines everywhere on the page. They removed some of the ink and placed dash-marks for the times through the day- this really helps free up the user to write across the time-blocks as needed, and is more pleasing to the eye.

But, how does it take ink? That’s a wonderful question- I have only a few inks at hand to test, but I’ve tested them in a few different pens. In specific, I have tested the pages with: A dry Parker “51″ with Noodler’s Legal Lapis, Lamy Safari F with Polar Black, Pelikan m400 F with Fountain Pen Network requested Noodler’s Galileo Manuscript Brown, and a Lamy Safari 1.5mm stub using J. Herbin Poussière De Lune. Ok, first the bad news- there is slight feathering on the wetter nibs. The good news? The feathering is completely tolerable- if you don’t use a crazy wet writer, you’re going to find yourself in fairly good shape! Which is quite a feat for a 100% post-consumer paper. My hat is off to Quo Vadis! I was shocked when the ink didn’t bleed right into the page and out the back!

Interestingly, the J. Herbin ink seems to work quite well, even with a 1.5mm stub-nib. There is very slight see-through (the scanner can’t even pick it up), and feathering is minimal.

You can see the lack of see-through on the right-hand image (look between times 2pm and 5pm- these two are front and back images). So, if you use J. Herbin ink, you will enjoy Equology, the ink I’ve tried has worked very well on those pages. For those of you who like inks that have serious nib-creep (like Noodler’s Polar Black and Legal Lapis etc.) you may notice some slight feathering and slight see through. Remember, though, this isn’t paper made exclusively for fountain-pens! This is serious eco-friendly paper here, and it’s taking ink quite well.

Other aspects of the planners are the same great options found on many Quo Vadis planners… the rip-off corners to find the current date quickly, and the fantastic sewn spine! This is excellent- this is not a gime-store stapled or glued binding- this is a sewn signature binding, and the planner lays flat on the desk. Excellent!

Finally, on a personal note- I’ve been through many attempts at using planners, many different methods both lo-fi and hi-fi. The Equology has come closest to what I want in a planner, so I’m very happy I’ve found it. There’s enough space I can lay down tasks for the week that must be accomplished, and if I wish, I can accommodate the Covey Roles & Goals, or the GTD Context methods (Equology actually has context boxes for @Phone, @Email along with See-Do (todos) Pay-Receive and Notes. A three month mini calendar sits atop each week to show you the coming months, even the days from Jan1 to Dec 31st are listed for each day. I haven’t even touched on the Contacts booklet that slides into the back cover (use-able the next year also) or the great info and maps in the front and back matter. For those of you who like yearly planning, there is also a yearly planner page for both 2010 and 2011.

I’m very glad I got the chance to review the Equology Minister planner, as I couldn’t do ink-tests in store and frequently was passing by the shelf of planners on my way to the registers, never giving the planner a good batch of time to review its features. Now that I have, I’m hooked.

Quo Vadis Planners are available in many stores near you, click below to find a store near you or online:

Click To Find Stores

]]> http://www.allenjhall.com/content/2009/12/14/equology-a-new-eco-friendly-planner/feed/ http://www.allenjhall.com/content/2009/09/30/ipod-application-ldapeople-importexport/ http://www.allenjhall.com/content/2009/09/30/ipod-application-ldapeople-importexport/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:17:53 +0000 admin http://www.allenjhall.com/content/?p=127 iPhone/iPod application “LDAPeople” allows your iPod or iPhone to search an LDAP server for contact information, which you can save in your contacts with a single button press. It fills the gap that Apple left in Mail for the iPod with system software os2.x (3.0 includes LDAP support, but not for ssh ldap connections, which LDAPeople supports). LDAPeople has a great, clean, implementation. I highly recommend the application if you’re on the fence about buying it. I use it frequently at my university.

The only barrier to using LDAP people is that, depending on your institution, you have to struggle through proper settings to ensure that you can utilize your organization’s LDAP server to the fullest. The latest update for LDAP people has made a great addition- the import and export of settings files! This is fantastic.

So, without further ado, here’s my settings file for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s main LDAP server: UIUC LDAP People Config File. Note that you can search by First name, Last name, and UID/UIN with these settings. The UID is also listed in parentheses after the person’s name to aid in finding the right student or staff-member based upon their e-mail address, etc.

If you make any changes to the settings, I’d love it if you could post below, allowing me to update the file and benefit the rest of the UIUC community. Thank you!

To see other reviews of LDAPeople and/or purchase it, see this app on iTunes:

Related post: iPod Touch Application: LDAPeople

Here’s the link to the article:

Prof. Tomasik has developed an 8-week online course for High-School and Middle-School teachers to incorporate NanoTechnology into their curricula: http://chemed.chem.wisc.edu/moodle (This work was completed in her doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.)

To get in touch with Prof. Tomasik, or see more about her, check out her LinkedIn profile here:

Here’s what I came up with to help output my data very quickly into a printable document that included numerous graphs.  First, the primary goal of this quick method is to be quick- to get tons of graphics (of same proportions) into a doc for printing or perusing.  Second- it should be relatively minimal typing, if possible.  [We all know we can do it by hand 100x; while grad-student pay rate is low, there's gotta be a better way.]

1. Get a directory listing for all the items wanted to be included and dump this in a text file.  (ls *.pdf > filelist.tex)
2. Create a main.tex file which includes the code we’ll need to do this fast.  [You can reuse this file for other directories of graphics needed to be printed.]  My example uses the following:

   \documentclass[%
   ,secnumarabic%
   ,amssymb, amsmath,nobibnotes, aps, prl,superscriptaddress,letterpaper]{revtex4}
   \usepackage[pdftex]{color,graphicx,rotating}
   \setkeys{Gin}{width=0.85\columnwidth}
   
   %Simple way to call images and add filenames to captions - for lots of data.
   \newcommand{\dataimg}[1]{
   \includegraphics[width=3in]{#1}
   Filename: #1
   
   }
   
   \begin{document}
   \title{CL Results\\
   \textit{Internal document not for distribution.}}
   \date{\today}
   \author{Allen Hall}
   \maketitle
   
   \include{filenames}
   
   \printfigures
   \end{document}

   The important code is the “\include{}” line and also the “\newcommand{\dataimg}…” section. This is what is going to do all the work for us.

3. Now, we need to take your filelist and add at the beginning of each line and end of each line the following:

   \dataimg{

   and at the end:

   }

   One way to do this simply is with a command line gawk command:

   Terminal Prompt> ls |awk '{ print "\\dataimg{"$0"}" }'

4. So, now each line looks like: \dataimg{filename1.pdf}
5. Once that is done, you can run the LaTeX compile, and you’ll have your file of graphs!  That’s a heck of a lot easier than writing each line out by hand.  [Use a program like TextMate or Gawk etc. to append and prepend each line with the necessary call.]

The benefit of the \newcommand is that it fills in the needed formatting for each graphics file, and attaches the filename for each graphic beside the graphics file itself.  You can make it prettier, I’m sure, but this is what I was able to do in a very short time frame.

There are many ways to accomplish this little task, you could use Gawk itself to write the latex file for you, I’ve seen some do makefiles to do this type of thing, or perl, or bash shell scripting etc.  But, the critical part is to leverage the computer to output a latex file for typsetting and save yourself some time.

This picture speaks volumes with respect to how easy it is to input data into the iPod and iPhone.  I hate to say it, but the simple stylus was quicker on the Palm platforms.  People are just used to using pens and pencils.  My inked up hand is a very clear indication of this.  To some extent, you can get around this problem with the phone service Jott; however, it also is not as quick as a pen.  Why do the options and computer voice always take soo long in voicemails and these new speech to text services?  [Incidentally, I love Jott for the following: On the go (driving) e-mails and SMS, Expense account additions during the actual payments of said items, and quick notes to myself when anything other than a voice-call is possible.]

The notes in question were taken in typical mid-hallway quick conversation mode, when there just wasn’t enough time to try and open the iPod, turn on an application, and start using the little funky button keyboard.

Incidentally, I also carry a Shirtpocket Briefcase ala Levenger, which always holds a series of 3×5 cards for lo-fi inbox notes.  The 3×5 card is the killer productivity app.  I’ll have to comment on these types of methods in future posts.  Let’s just say there’s a reason most old guys carry around a stack of 3×5’s in rubber bands, or monkey-clips, always in their breast pocket with a pen.

I would love to hear from you about your own methods of Hi-Fi and Lo-Fi productivity and difficulties in their intersections.

Today’s Earworm: “Saint - Saens Concerto Pour Piano N°5 <<Egyptien>> En Fa Majeur, Opus 103 Allegro Animato” performed by Aldo Ciccolini/Orchestre De Montpellier Languedoc - Roussillon from the album Saint - Saens Concerto Pour Piano N°4 Et N°5

First, a few caveats:

1. We’re going to resurrect the book files from your most recent iPod backup.  [You did have a most recent iPod backup, right?]
2. We’re going to lose all our info about bookmarks and books read etc. etc. with this approach.  Since we’re mostly concerned with the actual books, I’m not going to worry about this.  I just didn’t want to try to remember what I had downloaded, and for more obscure sources, some books may have needed to be reconverted etc.  [ugh]
3. We’re going to dabble in the command line (Terminal.app) - if that frightens you, I don’t know what to tell ya.  You’re probably better off redownloading everything inside Stanza itself.
4. I may miss quoting a few sources in this one, in an attempt to get the info out quickly, if you find I’ve used info you authored, please get in touch so I can properly give you credit.
5. I find the Mac (osX) to be the most versatile computer, and so this is only going to be focused on osX.  You may however find that portions of the following work for Windows and Linux (sorry those two are in the same sentence penguin guys- no slight meant).

Second- let’s get to it…

1. You need a program that can work on the iPod backup files (.mdbackup files usually located in your user/library/mobilesync/ folder).  For this, I used: MobileSync-Inspect (it works with 10.4.x and also other os’s).
2. To make it easy to peruse the files available inside the .mdbackup files, I ran a simple command to save the output of mobilesync-inspect to a single text file:

   ./mobilesync-inspect list >currentbackup.txt

3. Now, I found the files for the books located here: more currentbackup.txt |grep Documents/Library/
4. So, first step is simply snagging copies of the total contents of the library to a folder on the desktop. I first create a folder “StanzaLibraryResurrection” on the desktop…
5. Then, snag all the library into the folder: ./mobilesync-inspect backup Documents/Library/* ~/Desktop/StanzaLibraryResurrection/
6. Once that is complete (will take a while) you may want to backup the folder just to save some time in case you mess something up- label it red to avoid confusion and only copy out of it when needed.
7. Now, peruse the folders a bit.  You’ll see something like this:
   
8. Notice the folders with the syntax #.explode? Those are the book ePub files in unzipped format. I wish they were saved zipped, however, we can fix that. [Stanza likely unzips them to speed up library surfing.]
9. An ePub file is pretty much everything inside one of those numerical folders zipped up. You can have a look around and see the structure. Notice the content.xml files and the .opf and mimetype etc. These all have a purpose. For more info, you may find this page helpful (and it includes a sample.epub file): ePub Tutorial
10. Now, don’t just go zipping the folder up. I tried that for a few hours before coming across the important tidbit that the “mimetype” file must be uncompressed within the zip! Complex! Finally with some digging, I found that the following command will work for you if you open the terminal inside the folder of the ebook you want to convert (for instance …/Library/0/10/ ): zip -Xr9D 10.epub mimetype *
11. So, if you’ve accomplished that last one, you’ve successfully resurrected 1 book from your iPod backup that contained your Stanza library! The only thing left to do is to get it back into your iPod.
12. If you haven’t already been doing this, I’m glad you’re about to, because it’s quite a nice thing to be able to do… if you delved into this tutorial, you probably already are doing this, and so you can skip the rest of the steps- you already know what to do. Go grab Calibre!! Calibre is like an ebook iTunes… well, sort of. It’s not super graceful, but it does the job and does it well. It’s getting even better with each new release. And guess what- it’s FREE! [The all important price-point for a graduate student.]
13. Once you have Calibre installed, “Add” your newly created ePub ebook. It should autodetect all the metadata for you, and you should have a line in your library with all the book info! Nice.
14. Finally, to get it on your iPod/iPhone, go to Preferences in Calibre, and startup the content server. Then open Stanza, and use the URL listed in Calibre (with your computer’s ip address!) to surf to your shared library and download your ePub straight into Stanza on the iPhone. A more detailed discussion of how to do this and setup ISBN and cover image searching can be found here: 101:iPhone+Stanza+Calibre

In order to speed up the process, I may make a little applescript or shell script… but time is tight, so if you have questions, feel free to add them in the comments here. I’ll try to get to them when I have a free moment. Good luck!!