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How hard it is to blog properly these days. I mean, sure it's easier than ever to type things up either using my notebook or the blackberry and publish it all right to the net, but it's just way too difficult to write a blog post with properly thought out reasoning and half-decent grammar. The problem is coherence. It's getting more difficult to write things that are coherent. Without coherence within reasoning behind the writing I might as well let my python script do the talking by linking together random words from a dictionary (now that I think about it, that might be fun. Should try it on another blog).
Due to the difficulty of writing lengthy yet coherent pieces of writing I've missed a lot of opportunities for some good posts. New developments in technology like growing of a whole rat from its iPS cell culture from another adult rat (with some issue, but that's only to be expected), or protein-induced pluripotency within cells (the actual paper I have yet to read), or even the hypothesis that emergence of life might be hardwired into the complex system that is the universe (which is something I've suspected for a long time, but this is probably the first time it's been capitalized in a popular science publication). Don't even get me started with the plethora of amazing TED talks out there that I'm just dying to share with you all.
This is one of the most annoying thing in maintaining a personal blog. Am I a content creator or am I just copy-pasting cool news of other people's accomplishments into a digital medium for further copy-pasting, like how it is with most tumblr accounts (with some notable exceptions)? I always to try to write my own stuff but then the product of such creative exercise rarely if ever looks as exciting as the discovery of quorum sensing, new take on complexity sciences, or new developments in synthetic biology...
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On the other note, here are some interesting pictures of other people's computer workspaces. I think I should post my multiscreen setup here sometime in the future as well.
There are more at this webpage. Looking at other people's workstation setup is always fascinating for me. I guess it's a kind of technofetishism/infornography that's so common these days. I know a number of people who maintain elaborate workstation environments and give them lavish names like 'the cathedral' and such (I'd much prefer the term temple or a library, but each to her own I guess). And while I don't operate anything as fancy as that except in my lab, which doesn't count since the hardwares in that place don't really belong to me (8-core with 16GB RAM, 3 screens, wowowiwa!), I understand what they are going for. With the society being built increasingly around the engines of information we call 'com-pu-ter' it's become an essential feature of any semi-viable household. All of my friends think that while it's possible to live without TV, it would be impossible to live without the access to the internet and some sort of computing device. Even the non-techie ones who can't tell the difference between Java and C++. It's a shielded environment where one can fulfill both the functions necessary to life (earning a living) and functions necessary to keep the mind alive. Through education, fun, contact with other people, and just plain-ol time wasting. So the swordsmen take meticulous care of their swords, providing lavish casing and decoration of highest materials for their tools of trade and mental compass. So many of us do the same for computers.
I would love to be able to set up a beautiful workstation like that in my own house, but it is a little difficult at the moment. I move around frequently, both in terms of going around the city for jobs and moving to another place of living for whatever the reason. So my main computer had been a laptop for a long time. And since I can't seem to completely give up the computer gaming side of myself (well, console gaming as well, with PS2 and NDS-lite, but haven't really played them for... Months) all of them were light-yet-workstation class machines with dedicated graphics solution.
Even with mobile computing, however, I still maintain something very close to what those people do with their physical workstation. In the real world I like to keep my desk area meticulously clean. Just some spare USB cables for my netbook/ereader/blackberry connection, my external HD solution totalling at close to 2TB storage space, a lab notebook (paper), and my laptop. That's it. The rest is white and wood. No carpet, no dust. It's really wonderful. You'd be surprised to know how much clean workspace contributes to productivity.
As for 'pimping out' it's usually all in the computer. Instead of buying new exotic figurines or lighting fixtures for workspace like some other people I stick with software side of things. I run custom theme that looks cool, clean, and eats through less memory than the default vista theme. I have personal organize software running on my sidebar as a separate application instead of running windows supplied sidebar, which is, while nice in functionality uses too much memory and is a possible security risk. I am also very careful about choosing my desktop background image. Being pretty isn't good enough to be chosen as my desktop background. It needs to have certain aesthetic quality that works with rest of the software platform. I'm currently running a 3D simulation of human brain neurons as my desktop background and it fits in with all the rest of the computer and my work applications perfectly. It's like the whole thing's made with each other in mind. And the desktop's just the beginning. I also pay significant amount of attention to my web browser, which is probably between the first and the fourth most used application on any computer I use. Choosing a web browser is a really complex, sometimes draining process. Not only should I be aware of the kind of aesthetic look inherent to a browser, I also need to consider their technical capacity and memory consumption. Since mobile computing is a big part of my life I really need to watch the memory and processor power consumption on all my applications. I can't have my machine run out of juice just when I'm about to deliver that paper I've been struggling with three months, you see. Web browsers serve all sort of purposes for me. It's a banking terminal. It's a programming tool. It's an entertainment machine and a terminal to a different world.
At the moment I run three web browsers on my computer. Opera 10b with Opera Unite service activated (more on that later), Firefox 3.5 with greasemonkey and all the necessities, and Google Chrome. I just can't seem to figure out which browser I like the best, but the default browser on my computer remains Firefox for its wider compatibility. Opera 10b is something of a mixed bag. I think I can write a few things that really needs to be improved with the browser but overall the build is very tight, with all sorts of different functionalities and widget availability that makes this browser feel like a separate operating system independent of windows vista it runs on. I'm also in love with the Opera Unite service that turns any instance of Opera browser into a personal webserver with configurable programs/services you can download directly off the net. I can see where this service is going and I like it. Google Chrome is something of an oddball. I liked the browser so much that I briefly used it as my default browser. It's the fastest one of the bunch and you can certainly feel the speed difference compared to all other web browsers. It's secure with the whole sandbox mechanism, perhaps even more so than other web browsers on the market. Google is working on all sorts of crazy projects to increase the functionality of the browser, and it already had significant amount of improvements built into it. Yet the interface remains minimalistic with most of the 'gears' hidden beneath the clean shell some people think is 'too clean'. I like it. It does everything I would ever want from a web browser, and it's open source with full might of Google standing behind it, meaning it's going to places with new and innovative technologies. The problem is with the memory and processing requirements of the browser. It slows my brand new laptop to a crawl when left on for a whole day or two, which is something I usually do with my computers. Opera and Firefox so far doesn't seem to suffer from that problem.
Writing about all these things makes me feel like a geek, or an otaku of sorts. Definitely vast majority of people out there usually don't bother with theming their operating system or figuring out the perfect color sheen of the desktop wall paper or worry about ACID3 test results on their browsers. I guess I am a semi-otaku of sorts. Otaku meaning person obsessed with information, may it be about newest anime or computer technology, biotechnology or robotics. Infornography seem to be the description of how otakus treat information... More on that later.
I would love to be able to set up a beautiful workstation like that in my own house, but it is a little difficult at the moment. I move around frequently, both in terms of going around the city for jobs and moving to another place of living for whatever the reason. So my main computer had been a laptop for a long time. And since I can't seem to completely give up the computer gaming side of myself (well, console gaming as well, with PS2 and NDS-lite, but haven't really played them for... Months) all of them were light-yet-workstation class machines with dedicated graphics solution.
Even with mobile computing, however, I still maintain something very close to what those people do with their physical workstation. In the real world I like to keep my desk area meticulously clean. Just some spare USB cables for my netbook/ereader/blackberry connection, my external HD solution totalling at close to 2TB storage space, a lab notebook (paper), and my laptop. That's it. The rest is white and wood. No carpet, no dust. It's really wonderful. You'd be surprised to know how much clean workspace contributes to productivity.
As for 'pimping out' it's usually all in the computer. Instead of buying new exotic figurines or lighting fixtures for workspace like some other people I stick with software side of things. I run custom theme that looks cool, clean, and eats through less memory than the default vista theme. I have personal organize software running on my sidebar as a separate application instead of running windows supplied sidebar, which is, while nice in functionality uses too much memory and is a possible security risk. I am also very careful about choosing my desktop background image. Being pretty isn't good enough to be chosen as my desktop background. It needs to have certain aesthetic quality that works with rest of the software platform. I'm currently running a 3D simulation of human brain neurons as my desktop background and it fits in with all the rest of the computer and my work applications perfectly. It's like the whole thing's made with each other in mind. And the desktop's just the beginning. I also pay significant amount of attention to my web browser, which is probably between the first and the fourth most used application on any computer I use. Choosing a web browser is a really complex, sometimes draining process. Not only should I be aware of the kind of aesthetic look inherent to a browser, I also need to consider their technical capacity and memory consumption. Since mobile computing is a big part of my life I really need to watch the memory and processor power consumption on all my applications. I can't have my machine run out of juice just when I'm about to deliver that paper I've been struggling with three months, you see. Web browsers serve all sort of purposes for me. It's a banking terminal. It's a programming tool. It's an entertainment machine and a terminal to a different world.
At the moment I run three web browsers on my computer. Opera 10b with Opera Unite service activated (more on that later), Firefox 3.5 with greasemonkey and all the necessities, and Google Chrome. I just can't seem to figure out which browser I like the best, but the default browser on my computer remains Firefox for its wider compatibility. Opera 10b is something of a mixed bag. I think I can write a few things that really needs to be improved with the browser but overall the build is very tight, with all sorts of different functionalities and widget availability that makes this browser feel like a separate operating system independent of windows vista it runs on. I'm also in love with the Opera Unite service that turns any instance of Opera browser into a personal webserver with configurable programs/services you can download directly off the net. I can see where this service is going and I like it. Google Chrome is something of an oddball. I liked the browser so much that I briefly used it as my default browser. It's the fastest one of the bunch and you can certainly feel the speed difference compared to all other web browsers. It's secure with the whole sandbox mechanism, perhaps even more so than other web browsers on the market. Google is working on all sorts of crazy projects to increase the functionality of the browser, and it already had significant amount of improvements built into it. Yet the interface remains minimalistic with most of the 'gears' hidden beneath the clean shell some people think is 'too clean'. I like it. It does everything I would ever want from a web browser, and it's open source with full might of Google standing behind it, meaning it's going to places with new and innovative technologies. The problem is with the memory and processing requirements of the browser. It slows my brand new laptop to a crawl when left on for a whole day or two, which is something I usually do with my computers. Opera and Firefox so far doesn't seem to suffer from that problem.
Writing about all these things makes me feel like a geek, or an otaku of sorts. Definitely vast majority of people out there usually don't bother with theming their operating system or figuring out the perfect color sheen of the desktop wall paper or worry about ACID3 test results on their browsers. I guess I am a semi-otaku of sorts. Otaku meaning person obsessed with information, may it be about newest anime or computer technology, biotechnology or robotics. Infornography seem to be the description of how otakus treat information... More on that later.
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