Wireless and junk DNAs

 It's very weird how putting things of my day to day life together in title makes it sound like some other whacked out story reminiscent of Haruki and his line of chic-absurdist fictions. 

I'm glad to say that after some hassle I got the wireless at my new apartment working at last. The contract for the rent actually comes with free broadband internet access, which I guess isn't too unusual in this day and age. But the thing is, the cable modem in use by the apartment I'm in is a piece of relic that came from when dial-up was still the king and people flocked to American Online services. The initial attempt at connecting the cable modem with a wireless router ended in the cable modem sending out a corrupted packet so arcane that it instantly screwed up the wireless card on my new-ish thinkpad (the roommate's Macbook and my Linux laptop were fine. Ugh, vista why do you suck so much?) to the point that I had to spend the next week figuring out how to get it to work. In the end I fixed it by deleting the device from the system panel and reinstalling it, which was something of a gamble, since according to the google it only fixed anything half the time with no-one knowing the actual reason behind the malfunction. 
After my laptop got back into networking-ready shape I stuck with ethernet cable connection for a while at home since I didn't want to risk frying my wifi card again on the poisonous packets sent out by the antediluvian cable modem. I strongly suspected some sort of Lovecraftian mystery filled with murder and hideous secrets behind the nature of the unassuming block of grey plastic and was content for a while living like someone from mid 90's.

Alas, the life chained down by ethernet cable in my own home grew too vapid for me. For someone who needs good access to computer almost 24/7 to pay the bills couch/bed/front porch computing is of huge importance for me. If I'm going to be stuck in front of the screen at least let me choose the location (as a sidenote I frequently work in the park even when I'm outside, the whole sunlight/fresh air around me when I'm working does wonders for productivity). So I decided to do some real research on how to get the modem to work nicely with my wireless router. 

Well, it turns out the problem was the age of the router itself. It's made from so long ago when wireless access to net was a precious opportunity for the rich and the cutting edge, it's not properly shielded from electromagnetic field of other appliances within one to three feet of its location. From there on the solution was simple. Use the ridiculously long ethernet cable I've been using for my laptop and place the modem and the router at opposite ends of the room. Funnily enough it worked and I'm writng this from my couch. I don't know whether to be happy or be infuriated by the hurdle I had to go through to get something as simple as encrypted wireless network running.

On the other note, I've been following the Dresden Codak webcomic since the days of its first inception. Even made an id on the forums, though I've only posted there a few times at best. Here's the newest comic at the site. There's something about the combination of the fantastic and the scientific in those webcomics that I find very charming. Yet unlike some other webcomics dresden codak still retains a sharp outlook on the reality that makes me wonder if the author is really drawing the future. 

I really like the main character. There's something about her that's very appealing to me on some basic level I can't quite explain. Maybe it's because she's an eccentric mad scientist. And as I have stated numerous times before, everyone at their hearts secretly long to become a mad scientist. I want to be able to stable some portions of my DNA on the fly as well, provided that I have much better understanding of it mechanism and quirks than is available to the academia at the moment. I also want to ponder the questions of the universe and work at solving it or at least understanding it instead of playing second fiddle to the real researchers on the cutting edge of the humanity's learning (and someday I might be able to achieve that, if I play my cards right). 

I'm just trying to join the ranks of the diy-mad scientists with my slow-but-steady research on viability of minimal cell system using cheap affordable tools. I really do think it's possible. The more I learn about it, the better the chances look, provided that I don't do anything too elaborate. I'm a little skeptical about the research tool potentials of the diybio minimal cell but then we'd actually need to have something on hand to decide that kind of thing, won't we?