Chrome OS!

Typically, when I get a new computer, the first few hours, if not days, are exciting. Yes, sometimes there's some frustration, a lot of files to transfer, and programs to install, but usually, there's a new operating system to try out, and a lot of neat little features to play with. Today was not the case, despite my first non-Windows computer. After a few moments of unboxing, only 5-ish minutes was needed to fully set up my account, including syncing all my bookmarks, extensions, and applications to my browser. By ten minutes, I was playing Sporcle's daily word ladder, and now, I'm writing this.

The Chrome logo. 

Let me introduce you to the Chromebook. It's Google's idea of a web-based operating system based on its speedy browser, Chrome. While two models will begin going on sale mid-June (though not in Canada yet), my new toy is a prototype, the Cr-48 (an isotope of chromium, of course). 60 000 were made available for free in a pilot-study, in line with Google's beta spirit. Mine was won in a contest that involved making a diagram with Lucidchart, a flowchart making application based in the cloud.

To those unsure of what a "web-based" operating system means, here's the gist of it. Google believes that most of us spend a majority of our computer time in a web browser - visiting sites like Facebook, Youtube, News sites, and internet mail providers, or using web-based applications such as Google Docs, Presi, Piknik, and Lucidchart (and actually, there's not much that separates a site and a webapp). But most of our computer software, and what slows down the computer, is rarely touched, or used only for specific tasks.

There are plenty of web applications available.
(note, the android is just a browser theme -
Chrome OS is not currently related to Android)

The chromebook is a computer that trims all those programs, and leaves just the web browser. The obvious advantage is that it's fast - start up in less than 10 seconds (I'm averaging 7), twice as fast as my phone. Everything like bookmarks can be synced, and with data stored online, my files aren't stuck on one device - they can be accessed with the web. The obvious disadvantage is that I can't install programs - such as Pymol or Microsoft Office. Until programs can fully be online (there's a thin version of Office available, and Google Docs is a nice alternative), the Chromebook will usually be one's secondary computer. Also, without being connected to the internet, the Chromebook is rather useless, but with offline apps (which Google Docs, Gmail, News applications, and Games), there are still things to do when the internet is down.

That's the basic software of it, and since it's just the Chrome browser, the computer skills are fairly easy to pick up. The features are simple, but you really cut to the chase and get right to work. If my computer were to spontaneously combust or be placed into liquid nitrogen, no data would be lost. Chromebook users could sign into a device that is not their own, and be running their programs in seconds.

But I'll show you some of the hardware. The computer came in a rather inspiring box:

 

... and had plenty of stickers for customizing. I've only used a couple so far...

The hardware is rather simple, all black with a matte finish. 

The mac-like touchpad is rather large, and there's a standard size keyboard that's easy to type on.
The touchpad is also a button, and supports multitouch gestures. 

A notable difference is the "search" button that replaces Caps Lock. Clicking it opens a new tab with your cursor in the url box, but you can change it back to Caps Lock if you really wish. 

Software wise, it's really just the Chrome browser with a few new notifications showing the time, language, internet connection, and battery. 

There's not much else to say for now, but I'm quite pleased with the computer. I previously said that the Chromebook's more of a secondary computer, and I still agree with that point, but my regular laptop remains untouched since I started using the Chromebook. It probably won't be needed for a while - until I am in need of a program that can't be loaded on a browser. This post was written without a problem, while I could chat with a handy Google Talk feature on a bottom panel. Pictures were uploaded directly from Picasa. I'll update you when I finally need to open my other computer, and perhaps then, I'll also describe some more experiences with the Chromebook. 

Understanding Introns

Essay-a-Week Challenge - Week 4

"May 27th: Useless Knowledge and its Uses"

Between books and the internet, there is a vast repository of useless knowledge. What are some of the useless things you know? Why do you bother remembering these things?

Topics from, A Bookful Blockhead.

In my opinion, knowledge is a lot like DNA, so let me start with a bit of genetics. Our genes are very sophisticated. Sequences of just four nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) contain the information to reproduce all the organisms around us. But this statement is rather misleading, as the language of our genes is complex. Specific nucleotides can be adapted - methylated, phosphorylated, and/or oxidized - like annotations that alert specific proteins to do a certain task, or accents that can tell the cell if DNA is foreign or mismatched. There are even a few other nucleotides, though these are rare and often similar to the commonly known four.

Termed by Walter Gilbert, a Nobel-laureate biochemist, an exon is a sequence of DNA that is expressed as protein. This genetic information can be labelled as "useful knowledge", and only makes up about 1.5% of the human genome. These genes code for the proteins that direct and produce a cell's function, but even out of all these genes, many are rarely expressed, and some of these genes are turned off in a significant part of the population. So even among these exons, some of the knowledge is just "somewhat useful", or "perhaps useful once in a blue moon".

Then there are the introns - about a quarter of our DNA. These parts of the gene are inexpressed (generally), though some do play a role (helping in the translation of RNA to protein). Introns provide no information absolutely critical for the cell in the sense of coding for proteins (though some proteins will have a hard time being expressed without them), but nevertheless, we'll call this "trivial knowledge". Stretches of introns are often alternated between exons, and are spliced out before the protein is synthesized.

Introns are usually spliced out before the mRNA is translated into a protein.
It's like when you're in a group project and none of your work ends up in the final presentation.
The pat on the back and the "good effort" just reinforces the feeling of uselessness. 

The rest of our DNA, a rather large majority of it, is "intergenic" DNA: between the genes. While some parts of this non-coding DNA does play a role in gene expression, much of it is "useless knowledge", and is also referred to as "junk DNA". There are many reasons, and theories, on why we have so much non-coding DNA, introns included. We often point our fingers at deteriorated ancestral genes, splicing errors, replication errors and repeated sections. But really, the order of the four nucleotides is the only thing setting apart this useless DNA with the few stretches lucky enough to code for something important like DNA polymerase and cytochrome C.

Intergenic DNA dreams of becoming an intron someday.
(images courtesy of Wikicommons)

There are a few things I would like to point out in this already overstretched analogy:

1) Knowledge is infinite. 
There are an infinite number of things to understand, just as there's an infinite number of arrangements of nucleotides. The classic "the more we know, the more we know we don't know". Who knows what mutations will bring us next?

2) The "usefulness" of knowledge is temporal and situational. The usefulness of genes or knowledge comes and goes. The prehensile tail and knowing how to fax a document used to be important at some point in history, but they won't get you much credit nowadays.

3) Knowledge adapts and changes over time, and can behave under Darwinian evolution.  Ideas catch on and spread faster than resistance genes in bacteria. Human knowledge, especially scientific concepts, are adapted as we test new hypotheses; the most successful ones are incorporated into existing ideas (or an entirely new set of theories are born!). Ideas can die off, just like genes are lost - normally those that aren't as popular and relevant to a rapidly changing environment. Knowledge can be gained, while knowledge that is no longer useful may be lost.

The countdown begins.
203 days until Beethoven's birthday.
(as of post date)

So the simple answer to the topic-of-the-week is that I don't really see the line between useful and useless knowledge (cop-out answer, perhaps?). One can make a guess at a particular snapshot moment at what is vital and what is trivial, but the usefulness of knowledge like the usefulness of a gene changes as time goes on, and eventually, our knowledge today will be obsolete. Besides, who's to say learning biochemistry is more useful than knowing the date of Beethoven's birthday or the number of keys on the piano? Perhaps it's the latter that will make the daily double difference if I ever make it on Jeopardy! Or if my future employer asks oddly specific music questions during the interview.

I like knowledge, including trivial facts, because I like to learn (who doesn't?). I treat my studies of genetics and my determination to memorize all the countries of the world with the same (or at least similar?) enthusiasm. A vast repository of knowledge is a good thing, like genetic variation. You never know when a gene will come in handy, and it's fun to learn a whole bunch of things, no matter how seemingly useless.

Because knowledge is infinite and our knowledge will become obsolete, all knowledge we know now could be labelled as "useless", but that doesn't seem to keep people from learning things, just like our body continues to use energy to replicate the 98.5% that is non-coding. Since my microscopic DNA polymerase spends its time replicating junk DNA, macroscopic me shall dedicate my life to studying useless knowledge. So what useless knowledge do I know? Just read my blog.

Human DNA polymerase (beta), with a strand of DNA.

Webtip #4: Chrome Search Engines

Name: "Manage Search Engines"

Platform: Google Chrome

URL: chrome://settings/searchEngines (link only works on Google Chrome)

Where/how I came across it: Exploring chrome settings

What it does: Allows you to manage your default search engines on Google Chrome, and more importantly, set up keyboard shortcuts for specific site searches. 

Google Chrome is one of today's modern browsers, and currently ranks third in the browser wars (behind Internet Explorer and Firefox). It was released about two years ago, is currently used by around 12% of web users, and has set the standard for many features now offered across all major browsers. Because it is open source, you also have browsers based on Chrome, such as Rockmelt, which is really neat if you like multitasking with social networks. If you haven't already, I suggest you give Chrome a spin: it's not perfect - you may run into the occasional site that is not supported - but it's fast, has several features, is secure, is fast, is very stable, has plenty of extensions, can play angry birds, and have I mentioned it's fast? Today's webtip is one of my favourite features of Chrome: search engine settings. 

If you use Chrome a lot, you'll have noticed that certain sites, like Wikipedia and Youtube, will allow you to search its site after typing in a few letters of its url. For example, say I want to find a Beatles music clip quiz on Sporcle, one of my favourite websites and sources of procrastination. Instead of going to Sporcle's website, and entering the search terms into its search box, I can go there directly from the chrome omnibox (the main box where the website url goes).

(1) I go to the omnibox and start typing sporcle's url (sporcle.com). I type an 's', and some suggested sites are listed. (2) By the type I type the 'p', a message pops up telling me to "press tab to search sporcle.com". (3) So I press tab and a blue box tells me that I'm searching sporcle.com. (4) I enter the search terms and press enter... and (5) voila - the results page!

The best part is that you can set keyboard shortcuts to do the same thing. So instead of typing 'sp', pressing tab, and then entering your search term, you can shorten this further and reduce it just to an 's'. Just go to "Options" on the dropdown menu from the Chrome wrench, and click on "Manage search engines..." on the "Basics" tab (that tab is the first one and should already be open). Alternatively, you can put this as the url: chrome://settings/searchEngines.

Under a list of "other search engines", you'll see the search functions of the sites you've visited before - perhaps hundreds if you're a heavy user. For each site, there are three options: a title, a shortcut, and the search url. Change your shortcut into something shorter (instead of the default, which is the url of the site), such as "s". Note: you can also add search engines/shortcuts this way.

The third field is the search url, which for sporcle, is "http://www.sporcle.com/search/?p=1&s=%s". (if you want to add a new site, just go to your site, and search for "test". Copy paste the url, and replace "test" with "%s". Protip: For McMaster students who use pubmed and are tired of logging into libaccess for every article they open can search pubmed through libaccess directly by setting up a shortcut with "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/pubmed?term=%s" as the search url. You only need to login in once.

You can set up lots and lots and lots .

What does the shortcut do? Here's an example. I've set my youtube shortcut to "y". 

On another browser, you would have
1) clicked bookmark or typed youtube.com 2) loaded youtube 3) entered search term 4) loaded results page.

On Chrome, you'd usually:

1) start typing youtube.com 2) press tab and enter search term 3) load results page.

With additional fiddling, you can:
1) type "y " plus the search term, 2) load results page. 

So to see a page of lizard videos, all I have to do is go to the url box, type "y lizards", and press enter.

It takes only a few seconds from opening a new window/tab before I land on the video results page.

Using these shortcuts can make your web surfing a lot faster. It might not seem like much, but it's at least 5 seconds less each time you use it, and that's assuming a fast internet connection. I find this shortcut most useful when the internet is frustratingly slow, because you skip loading that media heavy youtube front page, or avoid another possibility for the site to time out. Just type and go. You spend less time waiting, use less of your internet bandwidth, and spend more of your time surfing the web. Awesome.

30° 15′ 0″ N, 97° 45′ 0″ W

Essay-a-Week Challenge - Week 3

"May 20th: One Thing I Understand Better than Others"

Having humbled yourself with the last essay, take a little time to revel in a subject you do understand. What misconceptions do other people have about this subject. What do you enjoy about it?"

Topics from, A Bookful Blockhead.

I've always had a good spatial sense. Even as a kid, I would rarely get lost. In an elementary school project, I could draw out the floor plan of our house with relative ease, and sitting in the backseat of the car, I would recognize buildings and always know which direction we were heading. Of course, this doesn't mean I never get lost, which is probably why I tend not to broadcast this trait, because when I'm not sure where I am, you will find me rather stressed and uncomfortable.

A good sense of direction and the fear of getting lost probably set me up for my great appreciation of cartography - the study of maps. I love maps. In my room in Hamilton, you will find five of them around the room: a world map, a road map of Canada, two maps of Taiwan (my highlighted travel map from my trip last year and a pictorial tourist map), and a postcard map of Nova Scotia from a friend. 

I was lucky enough to go on several roadtrips when I was young. Sometimes they were day trips, to Detroit and back. Perhaps most memorable was a three-week trek to San Francisco, where 11 members of our Taiwanese church sung at the inaugural service of our friend and minister, Rev. Danny Huang, who had transferred from our church to the Formosan United Methodist Church in the San Francisco bay area. The twenty days worked wonders for my growing appreciation of maps, as we hopped across the States, exploring plenty of well known cities, parks, and landmarks. 

Currently, back at home (in Toronto) for the first few weeks of summer, I am once again typing at the desk I've worked on ever since I started working on a desk (though I didn't bring it to Hamilton as it's way too bulky). Arguably, it was my first introduction to the colourful nature of cartography:

To the cropped left is a stack of papers, books, pens, and receipts
that were pushed aside. 

My dad bought the desk not long before I was born,
pre-collapse of the Soviet Union,
making the map a glimpse into the past. 

I grew up with maps, and gazing up from my Mercator-projection desk surface, I can count three atlases and a world almanac on the bookshelf. I would watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with an atlas in hand, trying to find every country in the March of Nations and learning something briefly before the next country was introduced. This whole procedure became much easier in 2008 when the atlas was dropped in favour of a laptop with Google Earth, which (not surprisingly) is one of my favourite Google services. 

Naturally, I enjoyed geography classes and most of history, especially if there was a geopolitical twist to it. In high school, I managed to take a geography class every year, starting with the Grade 9 basics of the Canadian geography, to the exciting studies of travel & tourism, physical geography, and geomatics. I learned the most in geomatics, probably because it was a Grade 12 course and had rather intensive projects compared to the rather fun, but less labour-intensive field trips spelunking and "exploring the tourist industry" of Canada's Wonderland. 

Geomatics deals with processing and visualizing geographic data: in essence, cartography on the computer. I had a lot of fun in this course, and we churned out plenty of maps, showing poverty in the GTA using census data, plotting down points we collected using GPS devices, and identifying potential landfill sites by evaluating an area's water system and population patterns.

There aren't many misconceptions about cartography that come to mind, though the term cartography seems to bring up sepia-touched images of explorers on ships charting out a coastline. The subject has become a very modern one, as GPS and GIS (global positioning system, geographic information system) have completely changed how map-making is done. Not surprisingly, it's rather applicable, and you probably run into its related services every day: using Google Maps or a GPS device, seeing election results on an interactive map, transit/road maps, or using any phone that has location tracking.

I suppose cartography and geomatics would fit into this week's category because I have had a bit of background knowledge that most people don't - driven by personal interest and assisted by some great teachers in my geography department. But knowledge doesn't directly translate into understanding and appreciation of a subject, which is something that I feel that everybody shares. We all use maps, and we're biologically wired to have some sense of space and location in our minds, though perhaps not as intensely as ants do. 

Arguably, my biggest misconception about cartography might be that I assume that everyone loves maps as much as myself, and consequently, I admire your ability to have read so much already, so I'll bring this post to a close. Even though I am no longer studying geography, I feel that it's a subject that is mostly learned outside the classroom, despite the iconic classroom roll-down map. So whether you're staying up-to-date on foreign news, travelling the world (on the road, or through the projector), or logging in hours and hours on Sporcle's geography games... keep doing it. May the wonders of cartography live forever [as society moves from paper maps to GPS =)]! 

Webtip #3: Demo Slam and Translation Music

Name: Google Demo Slam (and a bit of Google Translate)
Platform: Internet browser

URL: demoslam.com

Where/how I came across it: Google Facebook Page

What it does: Showcases amusing videos and stunts submitted by users and celebrities worldwide that each feature Google services. 

Today's tip is more like a link to more tips, specifically, on how to creatively use many of Google's services. The site has been up for quite a few months now; the videos were quite distracting during the year. I was reminded of the demo slams in a recent blog post on the Google Blog, which was cross-posted on their Facebook page. To give you a glimpse of the videos that are featured in the demo slams, below is one of my favourites:

As you can see, many creative uses of technologies are 'exploits' of their technology - not in the sense of abuse, but in the sense of using the service to create something completely unintended from its original purposes, such as skydiving with Google Maps, or verifying a model of a landmark using Google Goggles. 

One of Google's services that has probably been exploited the most, is Google Translate. We've all experienced some weird translations from time to time. The algorithm is obviously far from perfect, despite general impressiveness and long-term improvement. Translation Party is a website that translates a given phrase from English to Japanese and back to English repetitively, multiplying the effects of small translation errors to disastrous effects until an "equilibrium" is reached. Below's an example, using my brief description of Google Demo Slam. 

Yes, I am also showing some of the features of Chrome 13, coming soon to a browser near you, or here. 

About forty rungs later (they can all be seen here), I ended up with:

Google Translate has also been used as a base for music videos, especially after someone noted that its pronunciation feature could be used for beat-boxing:

There are plenty of related videos online, but I'll bring this webtip to a close from demoslams to translation music with a final video. Featured in a recent Google Blog post, Taiwanese pianist Wiwi Kuan produced a video using Google Translate in English and Mandarin that went semi-viral with half a million views and counting. You'll probably find it more amusing if you know a bit of both languages, but either way, enjoy!

How Beethoven Escapes Me

Essay-a-Week Challenge - Week 2

"May 13th: One Thing I Wish I was Smart Enough to Understand

No one understands everything, but everyone wants to understand something. Spend a little time discussing one of those fascinating subjects which you just don’t get. Why does it interest you? What don’t you understand?"

Topics from, A Bookful Blockhead.

If you’re reading this, you probably have some free time on your hands. So if you also happen to be on a device with speakers and a mouse/trackpad, I invite you to try out “balldroppings”. It’s a very simple webapp that allows you to make music by controlling interactions between balls, self-drawn lines, and adjustable gravity. [In regards to the 'net, the application was impressively built with javascript (i.e. no plugins needed), so if it doesn’t load properly, please upgrade to a modern browser.  /PSA]

I'm not much of a language person. I try my best with the English language, my Taiwanese is barely conversational, and my Mandarin skills compete for a distant third with my non-existent French. It’s not something I’m proud of, and while language fascinates me on a daily basis, I haven’t honestly invested much time and effort into speaking new tongues.

But instead of picking up some new Italian words, I'm writing this essay and asking myself,  "what is it about 'language' that fascinates me?" A language is a 'system of communication' - and independently, civilizations around the world have developed unique ways of writing and speaking to one another, to communicate emotion, law, history, and thought. It's the glue of a family or community that allows individuals to interact, and it can all be conveyed using slight variations of pitch and sounds controlled by our mouths and vocal chords, or alternatively, through some arrangement of lines and marks that look absurdly foreign to any outsider. Language reminds me of the first time I saw a 2 GB microSD card. There is so much information that can be conveyed in just a handful of words.

I hope the aliens make more
sense out of this than I do.

But even more amazing are the other types of “languages". Body language and facial expressions convey a significant amount of information on one’s emotions. (Now we're looking at those 32 GB microSDHC chips). Going on a tangent, mathematics is often labelled as a “universal language”, since its basic concepts is expressed in every language or culture. Math is something that can be communicated to anyone, even extra-terrestrials. 1679 is a semi-prime number no matter where you are in the universe. 

And while math is something I find fascinating and interesting, and much of it is still out of my limits, this essay will go towards a form of communication that seems and sounds quite different, but may ultimately be more of the same: music*. I consider music to be the true international** language – every culture has its own songs and instruments, and these voices can be shared and appreciated without any additional knowledge.

Music can convey a whole lot. Music can invoke: the pentatonic scale of the Orient, the cowbell of Latin America, the plagal cadence of Christian hymns. Music is often at the core of nationalism and at the heart of religion. Music is used to set the tone of an event - whether it's the sound of a string orchestra tuning, the opening chord of Mendelssohn's Wedding March, or the first few notes of Hedwig's theme.

There's a quality of music that allows the simple vibration of air particles hitting our eardrums to convey so much, and I wish I was smart enough to understand these complexities. It's powerful stuff, perhaps more so than NZT. The moment when the crowd sang O Canada at the Gold medal hockey game felt just as unifying and patriotic as Crosby's overtime goal, both times where everyone could stand proud as a Canadian. 

There are subtleties to music that are really amazing too - perhaps these are what fascinate me the most. Any trained pianist can play a Bach Invention, but few can capture the same tone that Glenn Gould mastered. Back when I took lessons, my piano teacher would ask me how my week was, based on how I played the first piece of the hour. I never took notice on how I played differently, but she was able to tell whether I had an inspiring or stressful week, just by listening. 

I wish I could understand more of how music works. How can pressing a sequence of keys on the piano with precise timing, speed, and pressure produce such beautiful music? It gets even more complicated with other instruments like the viola and the oboe, with even more variations on tone and pitch. It's almost magical. 

And personally, I don't believe that understanding the science behind a mystery necessarily makes it less alluring. Studying biochemistry has not lowered my appreciation of the miracle of life. Knowing that my phone can solve sudokus does not make completing them any less fun***. I feel that knowing the math and physics behind music can allow us to enhance what we already know, and create new revolutionary ideas in music. Take the theremin for example:

The theremin is just the surface. It allows one to adjust the pitch and volume (wavelength and amplitude for the physicists) to replicate some of the world's most beautiful melodies. If we could uncover more of the subtleties behind music, we would be able to understand how musical instruments - vocal chords included - can stir passion, make us cry, and bring us joy.

Music is already used in ballets and ballads to conveys stories. [The Russians are really good at this in my opinion.] Just like the written language, music contains the emotion of the artist - articulating Bach's preludes and fugues; music reminds us of the law and protests against the governments during the Vietnam War as sung by Bob Dylan, and the Beatles; music keeps a record of a country's history expressed in nationalist pieces like Sibelius' Finlandia; and music provides a glance into the thoughts in Beethoven's mind as he was composing his ninth symphony while he was deaf. 

There is much about music that fascinates me, and even more I don't understand. I suppose  I'll have to live without knowing, but then again, maybe I'll just compose a song that expresses my confusion and leave this for future generations. But I haven't even studied much music to have much confidence or knowledge in composing, so maybe for now, I'll just wish that I was smart enough to write polyphonic music.

Note, if you liked "balldroppings", which was a nice mesh of physics and music, you'll also like this, which is more mathy than physicsish, but just as fun. Interesting note, it uses the pentatonic scale, so everything'll sound pleasing. 

*Which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you’ve paid attention to the title, labels, or preamble link.
**I stop short at universal, or even cross-species, because sharing music assumes an overlapping audible range, and assumes that our fellow aliens can detect sound waves. 
***See a demo here: phone vs. sudoku

Webtip #2: Google Labs nGram Viewer

The second webtip brings my blog back to Google (though being hosted on Blogger, I guess it never left), in light of the upcoming Google I/O conference this Tuesday and Wednesday. Interesting stuff to be discussed, but for now, here's something to look at:

Name: Google Labs: Books nGram Viewer

Platform: Internet browser

URL: ngrams.googlelabs.com/

Where/how I came across it: Googling Google on Google News. 

What it does: Using Google's extensive digital book collection, this lab experiment graphs the frequency of occurrence of any phrase or word. Multiple phrases/words can be compared. 

This application is similar to Google Trends, a service that shows trending topics by graphing a search term's popularity over a period of time, as a proportion of all searches. For example, here's a Google Trend graph of "osama bin laden", over the last 30 days. 

If interested, below is a close up on Obama and Harper, who were clearly overshadowed by the news of bin Laden's death. 

Google Trends allows you to go as far back as 2004, when Google was about half its current age. Here you can see obama vs. osama again, where Obama's peak on election day '08 marked his most popular day in terms of Google search.

On the other hand, Google's nGram Viewer brings "trend searching" to a time before the Internet. Since Google has digitized many books and documents from the last two centuries on Google Books and other related projects, the database can be used to create similar graphs over a much longer time period. The nGram viewer is one of several "Google Labs", a collection several side-line projects, or experiments, that are usually created out of sheer interest.

Here's a Google nGram for written references to "tiger" and "lizard", from 1800 to 2000. Interestingly, tigers are nearly twice as popular as lizards in the early 19th century, but the two converge and follow a similar path for much of the 20th century. Note that both graphs show similar ups and downs.

Lastly, here's a Google nGram I used for a presentation on Darwinism and scientific racialism. You can see the term "The Origin of Species" surge after Darwin's famous publication in 1859, reaching its peak in 1900 with several references in German nationalism texts. The term "racialism" was first introduced during this peak. You can also see a surge in the terms of "superior race" and "racialism" during the Second World war. 

[I didn't include the term "racism" because its use in literature didn't really take off until the 1960's, while the bulk of my presentation focussed on the decades between the Origin of Species and WWII. Furthermore, books on racism jumped after the 70's, and would easily normalize the other three terms to flat lines, but here's a link if you want to see it.]

I'd definitely suggest trying Books nGram Viewer if you want to show correlations and trends between two or more terms for research purposes, or just if you're bored and like looking at graphs. Have fun!

Who I Am

Essay-a-Week Challenge - Week 1
"May 6th: Who I Am
A credo of sorts. Who are you? What makes you tick? What ticks you off? What do you want out of life? What do you think life wants out of you? Really, this one’s fairly open ended. Do with it what you will."

Topics from, A Bookful Blockhead.

Nearing twenty ellipses around the sun, I'm halfway done my undergraduate degree, and two decades through life. After twelve years in elementary, junior high, and high school, studying and sampling various classes in the sciences and the arts, I find myself in university working away at my Arts & Science degree. It's an interdisciplinary program, and I love it, despite the confusion and challenge in explaining what I actually do. But it is this challenge that is integral to the program, accepting and integrating different fields of study, that makes it as fun as it is relevant in the confusion of accepting and integrating different parts of life. 

Thankfully, for the sake of some focus, I have specialized in something: biochemistry. In the past year, after choosing my combining option, I began to dig deep into the cell, entrenching my studies in nucleotides and amino acids. They are the foundation of life from a biochemist's point of view, so let's start with that. 

Like the other nearly seven billion of us, I can be genetically defined by some combination of 28.5% adenine, 28.5% thymine, 21.5% cytosine, and 21.5% guanine. Yay Chargaff. On the nativism side of the nature vs. nurture debate, this code makes up a big part of who I am. Since my zygote era, these genes have directed the growth and specialization of cells from one to tens of trillions  - the miracle of life. There are plenty of things I can't change*: PTC will always taste awful. 

I was born in Canada to two Taiwanese parents. I've lived a lifestyle of both worlds, speaking Taiwanese at home and learning English through public school. I was raised spiritually through the United Church, with a Taiwanese congregation. Weekends, I'd play some folk music with the Taiwanese Toronto Chamber Orchestra. Weekdays, we practiced Beethoven in strings class. Here, nurture comes in and plays a role. The not-so-tall skeletal frame dictated by my genes - not so much. The 45% increased likelihood of arthritis from playing the cello, yup, that's my influence =). 

I suppose I spend a lot of my life trying to "reconcile" things, trying to bring together two or more concepts in my life and mashing them together. The Arts & Science Programme at McMaster holds an annual student conference titled "Combining Two Cultures"; a case study written by our first program director on our program uses the same name. I like this idea, and it's one of the reasons I love the program so much - to combine different disciplines and make the most out of them.

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I like this phrase. I don't get "ticked off" often, but when I do, it's probably when people go against this mantra on either extreme: asking for more, or not doing anything. But again, I don't get "ticked off" often, usually because everyone's different and entitled to their own philosophy. Much like lemons, I'll make the most out of the scenario. 

But life doesn't usually just give you lemons. There's also limes. And apples. And watermelons, guava, and blue raspberry. And then life throws you some cut of lamb and a bagel BELT from Tim Hortons**. [Perhaps I didn't have dinner today.] Life gives you a ton of stuff. What I want most out of life is to be able to reconcile these different parts of life - both things I can change, and things I cannot - and create something nice out of them. 

I don't like seeing conflict, or "opposing" ideas. When I tell people I'm doing an "Arts and Science" degree, people usually go, "cool, but aren't they complete opposites?" In my mind, no. They're like two ingredients in the kitchen that aren't usually paired, but when done right, it'll be amazing, much like maple syrup and imported tapioca pearls, my wonderful Taiwanese-Canadian treat made for the multicultural night at Shad Valley 2008. 

I was first introduced to the word "synergy" by Shad UNB program director Ian Forgarty. The word describes the combination of two ideas, or concepts, or compounds, that creates a product or effect greater than the individuals. His example was the sustained benefit of taking Vitamin C and Vitamin E together, compared to the limited effects of consuming each vitamin on its own. This concept is vital to the idea that "when life gives you lemons, blue raspberry, and a cut of lamb, make lemon-roasted lamb served with blue raspberry sauce. or something-like that". 

I've learned a lot in the past two years, even more in the past two decades, and I really enjoy putting arts and science together. It can be as superficial as explaining the Protestant Reformation with organic chemistry compounds, as deep as understanding the theme of uniformitarianism and the works of Lucretius, or as fun as a musical interpretation of the ActR transcription factor of Streptomyces coelicolor. 

I am a person who strives, and struggles, in reconciling different aspects of my life: my passion for the arts and the sciences, my studies of both Christ and biochemistry, and my culture of Taiwanese tradition in a Canadian lifestyle. It's not always easy, but I appreciate the challenge - it gives me purpose each morning as I discover new recipes for better synergy. mmm, mmm, good.** 

And that's, who I am. 

*at least, not yet. 
**not a paid advertisement. 

Lizard Tails

One of my goals of the summer is to learn some basic computer science, a subject I feel is somewhat important in my studies and very relevant to modern life. I've decided to tackle this on two fronts: sampling some developing on Android using the Google AppInventor and related kits, and grasping the main concepts of website design. For the latter, I'm focussing on html and css, and will attempt to redesign my blog by destruction and reverse engineering. I have already added and adjusted some elements, including the updated navbar. I still have to figure out how to highlight the label of a current page, but it'll do for now.

Navigation Bar, as of May 5, 2011

The newest addition, "Lizard Tales", is another hopeful project of the summer, ensuring that I'll have something to write about, even on a slow news week. Like my Taiwan blog, it has a banner of its own - click below, (or on the navigation bar), and you'll be taken to the introduction and home of my attempt at the essay-a-week challenge. Enjoy =).

Webtip #1: Wordle Word Clouds

Here's a new type of post, "webtips", featuring interesting web apps and tech tricks, as this site continues its identity crisis [food blog? political commentary? travel journal?]. No doubt many of them will be Google related, but let's start with one that isn't:

Name: Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

Platform: Internet browser
URL: www.wordle.net

Where/how I came across it: Among the great stuff shared in the artsci forum. 

What it does: It takes text, either copy/pasted or from a site's url/feed, and generates a word cloud of the most used words, with plenty of customization options.

This link is apparently nothing new, since it was first shared on the forum in late 2008, but I discovered it about two months ago. It was soon bookmarked, and I finally used it in a recent post, wrapping up a series of notes on the 2011 Canadian Federal Election. The tool itself is very, very easy to use: simply input your text, or paste a site's url, and press Go/submit.

The site uses Java to generate its word clouds, and then you will be able to customize the font, colour, and layout of the words, while removing common words as desired. You can also randomize the settings - and the nice thing is that most of them turn out pretty well.

Try it out, it's lots of fun. Below is a word cloud of this very post:

2011 Federal Election Afterthoughts

The last thirty-seven days have been exciting and exhausting, but with the abrupt end of the federal election campaign - the fluctuating polls, the talk of coalitions, the debates, and the hockey analogies - not to mention an end to the seven years of minority government that could have collapsed at any moment, Canada has chosen to elect a "strong, stable, national Conservative majority government", leaving myself, and plenty of other Canadians, in an election hangover - lying in bed, perhaps with a light headache, wondering, "what in the world happened Monday night?" and ignoring the fact that this is a rather long run-on sentence.

The past six weeks have gone by quickly. I had crashed early on the night of the 25th, after a busy week without much sleep, to wake up at around 9:45 a.m. on March 26th and catch the closing remarks of Harper announcing that he had dropped the writ. I saw the first campaign sign by 1:30 p.m. the same day, promoting the re-election of Conservative MP David Sweet who got his wish without much of a threat.

This election was my first federal election, though my first vote for a public official was the municipal election in Hamilton in late 2010. Nevertheless, there were plenty of firsts: attending a campaign rally and an all-candidate's debate, being in the audience of the prime minister, and joining a vote mob. Once exams ended, I was able to pay a lot more attention of the campaigns, watching the debates in full (well, at least the English one), emailing candidates, and blogging about issues that concerned me. Excluding this post, I wrote eleven notes, totalling 7610 words, not counting quotes, responses, and letters. The most used, non-common, words are shown on the right in a word cloud, generated at wordle.net.

I am not going to question the voting intentions of Canadians. I am, without a doubt, disappointed in the results, handing Harper a majority and seeing the fall of the Liberal Party. While the Grits goes searching for a new leader, hopefully more leader-like than the last two rounds, I'll say that I really like Michael Ignatieff for who he is. Perhaps he's not prime minister material, but I tend to admire the professor type, and it really takes something to tour the country, campaign without a teleprompter, take unscripted questions, and interact with Canadians, no matter how crazy. Assuming he does go back to teaching, I'd be more than happy to take one of his classes someday. It really takes two years of personal attack ads to give Canadians the impression that 30 years of living abroad as a journalist, writer, and  Harvard professor is a bad quality to have as prime minister.

As for the orange revolution, it's nice to see that Canadians, or perhaps mainly Quebeckers, want to see change. But note two things: 1) I see the today's 102-seat NDP as a "merger" of the political strengths of the former 36-seat NDP and the 49-seat Bloc. The leftist party now has an obligation to serve the interests of Quebec if it wishes to maintain support for a majority of its MPs. True, now the NDP is finally the official opposition, but it's important to remember that the 36-NDP had more political power with a minority Conservative government than any amount of seats with a Conservative majority. 2) This Conservative majority resulted mainly from gains in Southern Ontario, where vote splitting between the Liberals and the NDP played its most significant role. It's disappointing, but just like strategic voting, it's a part of our democratic system. Parliamentary reform has been talked about in this election: personally, I'm not in favour of a proportional representation system, i.e. voting just for a party, but I support the idea of preferential voting through a system based on instant-runoff voting.

Regarding our newest MPs, young minds are not necessarily bad. Especially with the NDP acting as opposition to a majority party, we are not placing much pressure on the students recently elected. I've already seen and read comments from two of the first year students (Pierre-Luc Dusseault | Laurin Liu), and despite their own personal surprise of getting a new job, they are genuinely taking responsibility of their duties and willing to put their full effort into the next four years. Knowing hard-working students and members of parliament, the students might be able to get more things done, and one of the things I look forward to most in the next Parliament will be finding out what these two MPs are learning.

We will go to the polls again on October 19, 2015 (assuming the majority doesn't collapse, the US hasn't invaded us, and the Mayans miscalculated). It's a long way away, but it'll ensure that the NDP have time to train their caucus, it'll give the Liberals time to rebuild, it'll give Quebec to rethink the need of a provincial party at a federal level, and it'll give the Greens a long while to cherish and enjoy their first elected seat. Harper will have all the time he needs to pass what he wishes. It's hard to imagine what [Harper's] Canada will be like in 2015. Without its long gun registry, party subsidies, and unbiased long-form census data, of course. Toronto would've hosted the Pam Am Games, hopefully opened by a different mayor. My sister, still in junior high, will be voting for her first time. Wow.