Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

NCBI has some very readable accounts of how you might use their database tools to do real bioinformatics work: NCBI Coffee Break

An online game that gets smarter the more you play it: Guess The Dictator/Sit-Com Character. Think of a person (any old dictator or sitcom character will do, apparently), and you will be asked yes-no questions, twenty questions style, until the computer guesses who you’re thinking of. If it’s wrong, you add a new question to the database so it’ll win next time. It’s an intriguing concept that sadly doesn’t turn out to be that much fun.

Scott McCloud has re-worked his online presence at scottmccloud.com.

This has got to be the most truly accessible genome browser out there. Built by Jim Kent of UC Santa Cruz, largely as a one man effort, I believe. It’s worth sifting through. Working Draft Genome Browser v5

Alas! Feed is now more. Then again, I never sent them any money. When the NPR folks hijack your radio station during a fundraiser, eventually you send them money. But when a web site goes silent… oh well. Read about it: Feed On Ice: A Word to Our Readers

Those wacky Japanese! They have their own version of reality television, and it blows our version away. Read all about Nasubi and his efforts to live for a year solely on what he could win in contests.

Find here a woman who draws pictures of every meal she eats on her Palm and then uploads it to her blog. Obsessive-compulsive order run wild, or post-modern hero? pocketpig.com – a daily dose of delectable drawings

Atomica Corporation, formerly GuruNet, is a mildly interesting portal-for-sale kind of an idea. I wonder if it will last.

TimeFinder

I always enjoy reading any interview with Chris Ware. He’s a thoughtful talented artist. Here’s a good extended quote from the The Onion.

I guess I’ve read once or twice that people think I’m “trying to bum them out,” which certainly isn’t the case. I’m only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I’d hope it’s rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of “contemporary culture” to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery. I don’t trust art that promises a 24-hour joyride. In fact, there seems to be a modern sense of entitlement for such constant “ups,” which is a repugnant attitude any way one chooses to look at it. I definitely believe in the possibility of happiness, though; it’s just something that I think, rightfully, is rare in its genuine form, and that it can’t be counterfeited.

Here’s the whole interview.