Seriously now: I'm on cell phone number 2 and cell phone cable number 3, and I STILL can't get Gammu working. Right now I'm trying to work off of these instructions, but it's not even clear that the thread's participants had success. And, to be honest, I'm not following all the instructions — compiling custom kernel modules seems a little advanced, but I suppose I'll give it a shot eventually.

Anyway, I'm officially running crying back to mommy, aka the project listserv. They haven't been able to help me out yet, but the current batch of Nokia crap was bought on their recommendation, so I'm doing my best to maintain my trademark childlike optimism.

reorganizing the shoe rack: never a good idea.

i got a little carried away with the note feature noting my shoes, so click through if you care. about shoes. and my reorganizing of them. and really, why wouldn't you?

Scientists have run a complete simulation of a virus, down to the atomic level, for 50 ns. This seems like a pretty big deal. Admittedly, we already do really sophisticated modeling of the interplay between cell receptors and viruses. Without a complete model of a cell, a viral model doesn't seem likely to do you a whole lot of good, and cells are waaay more complicated than viruses. Still, it's encouraging just to know that this kind of thing can be done. It's going to be an amazing breakthrough when a complete viral lifecycle can be simulated on an atomic level.

And hey, maybe it wouldn't be that hard to build a complete model of a ribosome (here's where we overstep my knowledge of cell biology). That seems likely to do a lot of good in and of itself (although I have no idea if it'd let you sidestep the computation necessary to solve protein-folding problems or not — if not, you'd be headed from one supercomputing problem straight into another).

• goFOIAurself.com. Via Cyrus.


• This looks pretty cool, and at prices ranging from $35-100 per wheel (depending on quality of the effect), seems to offer an excellent return on girlfriend-embarrassment per dollar. Sadly, I'm not man enough for this project: the shame and theft risk means I'd only undertake it if I put it on a dedicated, removable front wheel, which seems likely to (at least) double the cost of the project. Not out of the question, but I'd have to have something really important/stupid to say via magic bike wheel in order to spend that kind of money. Also on the neat-but-impractical-for-my-self-conscious-renter-self LED project tip: this.


• The latest in my ongoing procession of disappointing SMS cables has arrived. Spirits are high, but a part of me knows it's just going to break my heart all over again.


• Firefox crashed while I was composing this entry. It no longer surprises me when this happens, not even a little. I've gotten over most of the annoyances related to my switch to OS X, but the utter suckiness of Mac Firefox continues to disappoint. Safari seems stable, but its tabbed browsing is non-obvious (or not available by default?) and the stupidity of enforced Aqua-style HTML form elements cannot be overstated (why do you think you're better than CSS, you goddamn hippies?). Anyway, a GreaseMonkey script to do Gmail-style Movable Type draft-saving would take approximately five minutes to write, and probably solve much of this losing-blog-posts problem. I'll try to hammer that out tonight, if I can find the time. I've got a lead on fixing my Gmail Colorizer script to work properly, too — might be a GreaseMonkey-heavy evening.

  So many projects! This is the catch-22 of Catherine's visits: they make me happy, which puts me in a hyper-productive/inspired state, which then can't be satisfied because I'm spending all of my time being happy with my girlfriend. The trick, I think, is to get the projects started, then grind them out when ennui sets back in. Let's call it the long-distance relationship software development methodology.

how to be an awesome guest: even when your host-in-absence gives you the ENTIRELY WRONG SET OF KEYS to her apartment while she's in d.c., and you don't really have anywhere else to stay, or a hotel reservation, and don't necessarily know the city very well, and end up having to deal with your host-in-absence's weirdo russian building supervisor to extract a set of extra keys from him, you still leave your fully-panicked-and-embarrassed host-in-absence this loveliness:

thanks, emily. after a 6:30 am flight this morning back to chi-town and three hours of class in the new quarter today, i feel pretty certain that this evening will call for one-to-four mojitos.