Interview complete

Well, today was the day. A very long day in fact. As outlined in the last post, I spent the day giving a seminar, meeting with the selection panel, meeting with the lab scientists and general staff, and a final meeting with the selection committee. The process ends tomorrow with a tour and the long flight home.

Do I want this if offered? It would a tremendous change of life and lifestyle. So many things to think about. It would be very challenging job.

interviewing

I've been away from home for a week and a half, three full days to go before returning. The first week was a vacation with my wife--it was a celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary. I'm still on the east coast, attending a conference at which I gave a talk yesterday. Getting a little tired of hotel rooms, and I look forward to getting back home and sleeping in my own bed.

So, I am getting a job interview with the research center in West Virginia (see "options"). it's in two weeks and from all the information sent me, it will be pretty intense. There are three candidates. Besides the the seminar, there is a 3 hour session with an interview panel, tours, meetings with lab heads and staff, and a final meeting with the agency area head. My boss knows, out of fairness I told him. It's a weird feeling. It is so far away and it would mean starting over research-wise. huge life change for my family. It may be very tough on my son, but he will be starting college next year. Really tough on both our moms.

But all this is getting ahead of myself. The other two candidates are very, very qualified, and actually more so because of their closer experience with fresh water aquaculture. It will be a good experience. Nervewracking, but positive.

the end of my third browser

As quoted from Slashdot, it's the end of the line for Netscape.

Netscape Finally Put Down: "Stony Stevenson writes to point out that Netscape has finally reached end of line with the release of version 9.0.0.6. A pop-up will offer users the choice of switching to Firefox, Flock, or remaining with the dead browser, but no new updates will be released. 'Nearly 14 years after the once mighty browser made its first desktop appearance as Mosaic Netscape 0.9, its disappearance comes as little surprise. Although Netscape accounted for more than 80 per cent of the browser market in 1995, the arrival of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the same year brought stiff competition and surpassed Netscape within three years.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I used Mosaic and Lynx (text only) before Netscape, but then it came along as the first, I believe, "commercial" browser. it was the best for awhile. But later versions sucked on Macs, and even IE was a better choice for the longest time. After the transition to Mac OS X, I used early versions of Omniweb before settling on Safari (with occasional dalliances with Firefox). The sale to AOL killed innovation in the browser....I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.

BusySync 2.0 Will Sync iCal with Google Calendar

BusySync 2.0 Will Sync iCal with Google Calendar: "BusySync makes iCal work the way it ought to work right out of the box.

(Via Clippings.)

I installed BusySync a few days ago to get my calendars syncing again. I still use Entourage's calendar, but had figured out a few years ago how to get a WebDav server running on my work desktop and use it to sync an iCal calendar. Kind of convoluted, but any new addition to Entourage would use sync services to add the same event to iCal. And then, to sync my laptop calendar, I'd vpn into my work network, let the two iCals sync, and that was it.

But then the WebDav server config I had going broke after my Leopard upgrade. During the conversion to BusySync, I dumped all calendar entries into iCal from Entourage. That's when I found thousands of old entries back in 2001-2003 that never auto deleted. In fact there were only about a dozen unique entries, with hundreds to thousands each. This was obviously due to bad syncing (I suspect my Palm Tungsten); all were repeating events anyway. Once I manually deleted all of these, sync services did it's magic to sync everything between iCal and Entourage, and Busy Sync does it's thing between two Macs over the internet.

'We remove Vista'

Couldn't resist this one...

A computer shop's sales pitch: 'We remove Vista': "After reading today's story about Windows Vista's first year, reader Bruce Finlayson of Seattle sent along this photo that he snapped in October outside a computer store in Milford, N.H. ..."

(Via Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog.)

Application UI consistency with Tiger/Leopard

(author note: I don't write reviews often (why bother!) and certainly don't expect this to be read by anyone except, perhaps, by the unfortunate person who accidently stumbles over this inane blog. I'm mostly jotting this down to warm up for some other writing I have to do.)

Like most Macintosh owners, I use iTunes and iPhoto a lot. In addition, however, there are two additional applications I use (or recently started to use) that follow the same general user interface as iTunes or iPhoto. Both are powerful applications in their own right. And for my money what makes them better is due in large part to the common look and feel. These UI designs include the configurable menu on top, the list of critical information and folders on the left hand in a panel that is light gray/blue, list of stored items in the default top pane below the menu bar, and a bottom pane that displays items specific for what the application is designed to show. Double clicking on an item then removes the top pane, filling the entire window with the item. I suspect this is due to common developer's tools and programming libraries provided by Apple and takes advantage of specific GUI components (Cocoa, Carbon, whatever, it works). Whatever it is, I like it. These applications are Papers from mekentosj.com and NetNewsWire now free from NewsGator.

Papers

Papers is an application written by a couple of young scientists (Alexander Griekspoor and Tom Groothuis) in the Netherlands while they were post docs in a cell biology lab. It's main purpose is for creating a library of PDF files, complete with important metadata and complete citations, and is primarily designed for use by scientists as a repository of journal articles. Citations can be imported from several on line resources including PubMed, the Web of Science, Google Scholar, and several others. A variety of documents can be imported, although the predominant use is for PDF file storage. Once imported, complete citation data can be automatically 'matched' to the PDF file by either using the DOI number, or via a variety of built in on line searches, such as an author search of PubMed. Journal articles can in turn be matched to existing citations through a built-in Google search function, which more often than not finds the appropriate PDF, usually on the publisher's web site. The entire library including the PDFs are searchable via a subset of Spotlight indexng, with built-in filters, such as title, author, journal, keyword, etc. PDFs can be read in a window, or a click of a button will open the PDF in full screen mode, like iPhoto. One can organize papers in a variety of collections. Articles can be added to collections manually or by the use of smart folders, which collect appropriate papers based on keyword AND/OR filters, much like smart folders in iTunes. Finally, it can import from or export to EndNote citations via XML files. Papers was an instant hit in my laboratory.

It's a powerful application and is Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard) only.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire is an RSS News aggregator originally authored by Brent Simmons and now owned by NewsGator. I had tried using this when it was still a 1.x release but then had little use for it. Lately I've been using iGoogle as my RSS aggregator, but since NNW is now free, I thought I'd give it a new look. First, second, and third impressions have been favorable. It's fast, can synch subscriptions and articles between more than one computer (via .Mac or through a free NewsGator account), and uses the Safari web rendering toolkit to display complete web pages within the news window. Articles or snippets of articles can be selected and automatically sent to a blog editor (such as MarsEdit), complete with appropriate link and citation. While I'll still use iGoogle as my browser home page, since most of my web reading are news sites I see myself using this more and more.

OK, there's a couple more I should mention. MarsEdit (orignally written by Brent Simmons and then further developed by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software) which I'm writing this with and mentioned above), and the Leopard Finder window also follow these guidelines. All in all, I truly appreciate the consistency. In fact I may just have to buy MarsEdit once my 30 day evaluation period expires.

options

In the next week, I'm submitting a job application to another government science agency. It's for a research director position at a mid-sized lab on the east coast. I've been informally recruited, and it's intriguing enough to at least apply and maybe get an interview. I'm not sure I'd take it if offered, as this would be a tremendous change in terms of where we live, much different than the move contemplated last year. But as I said, intriguing. As a research leader I would be administratively responsible for the entire lab including ~10 principal investigators with about ~25 projects and a total staff of ~35, but also responsible to maintain an active research program. The center is more than adequately funded, and the leader is also supplied enough funding (and space) to bring in post docs and technicians to do so. I've visited the place (a few years ago) and it's a great, relatively new lab, that is well-equipped and designed right. There's designated administrative and IT support, including the all important bioinformatics support.

What's not to like? Well distance from family (almost the other coast), including our kids who are at the age where they won't want to move there (one will be graduating from college, and the other will be just starting college, somewhere in the northwest. Getting ahead of myself here though, as usual.

yet another weight update

A little weight update. Keeping it off, still 164. Running has been pretty consistent except for a little down time due to ITB syndrome (ilial tibial band). Pesky hamstring strains, that I usually try to run through. I've had several physical therapy sessions, some with ultrasound treatments. At my age I just have to be careful about stretching. I have lots of them to do according to the PT.

warranties?

This post on TidBits is a bit alarming and good to file away for future reference. I too replaced my MacBook Pro with a 200 Gb Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 hard drive purchased from OWC.

When is a Warranty Not a Warranty?: "I've discovered this in the worst manner possible, by finding out that Hitachi's standard operating procedure for warranty replacement is, literally, a 'slow boat from Asia' approach. A replacement hard drive had to make its way from Singapore to California, taking an estimated 7-10 'business days' (in December, that's extended thanks to the holidays), after which it could be sent across the United States to me in Ithaca."

(Via TidBITS.)

might as well post the graph

Now I must work to maintain this weight (166 today).  Actually, what I'd like is to get it down to 160, and then tone up some muscles (which may add a few pounds).