Apple’s 8 GB MacBook Pro ambiguity

There is a minor stir occurring among owners of Apple’s new 15″ MacBook Pro Unibody machines concerning memory capabilities. The primary problem is that the models that can handle 8 GB of memory appear to be ambiguous by Apple’s own standard, and sorting it out is somewhat confusing. There’s also a lot of misinformation and missing information floating around. This is an attempt to clear things up.

Dream job post

I was looking at job offerings and came across a post for a neurobiophysicist. Because it contained both the roots “neuro” and “biophysics,” my interest was piqued, since I’ve never heard of anyone referred to by this compounded title. It turns out that I’m apparently training to be a neurobiophysicist, and despite the location of the position (San Antonio, Texas), I am very intrigued by the job post. My hope is that other academic places are looking for someone who fits this description (emphasis added):

We seek to recruit a vigorous academic with an established track-record of research in the broad area of the physics of neurobiological processes. This might be anyone from a “patch clamper” to a computational biophysicist to someone studying signal transduction mechanisms but not necessarily limited to these examples. Trinity University has secured funds to endow the position and provide continuing funding for the position after our HHMI award expires. This professorship will be at the level of full professor. The position comes with a dedicated half-time support staff position, discretionary funds, and a reduced teaching load (6 rather than 9 contact hours per semester).

This position will be an appointment in the Department of Physics, providing some support to introductory physics courses, a course in biophysics (suitable for both physics and neuroscience majors), and a course in the faculty member’s specific area of expertise (specifically supporting neuroscience majors) in the teaching repertoire. In addition, the person hired in the position will maintain a vigorous research program that will engage undergraduate student researchers. The neuroscience major requires independent research as a culminating experience for the degree. Further details about the position are available in the position announcement.

The position will also work with faculty from biology, chemistry, and psychology in supporting the neuroscience major. This interdisciplinary major was established in 2005 with funding from our 2004 HHMI award. Through a combination and retirement and this HHMI-funded neurobiophysicist position, the neuroscience program will be expanded and redefined. In addition to this position, we will be hiring a cognitive scientist in Psychology and an animal behaviorist in Biology to support the neuroscience program.

It’s so accurately describes what I am interested in (and doing) because of aspects of combining computational approaches with electrophysiological techniques. Additionally, the appointment is in a physics department (my undergraduate degree is in physics), with teaching duties in both neuroscience and physics. I’m pretty far from doing a job search, but here’s to hoping positions like this become more common by the time I graduate!

Google Maps keyboard shortcuts

Just realized there are several handy keyboard shortcuts on Google Maps. Feel free to add to this list.

Arrow keys: simple, accelerated navigation. The longer you hold the key down, the faster you go (to a limit, might be based on your connection speed?)
Home/End (Fn+Arrow R&L on Mac): move about 3/4 of a page West and East
Page up/down (Fn+Arrow Up & Down on Mac): move about 3/4 page North and South
Equals/Plus key (=/+) (no shift needed): Zoom in
Minus key (-): Zoom out
Forward slash (/): Puts the focus on the search box

Think in blag form

Two blag ideas I’ve had are (a) The Thomas M. Menino, Mayor Blag and (b) the lonely glove blag. This is in line with mildly amusing but utterly time consuming ideas such as my friend’s Drug Rep Toys blag and another friend’s Papyrus sightings blag (both of which tickle me).

Menino is the mayor of our fair city, and he has this sneaky way of putting his name on EVERYTHING that probably is funded by the city – posters, bus stops, buildings. Probably his small children are branded with a little placard that says, “Thomas M. Menino, Mayor.” It’s brilliant in a sense because his name is out there for us to stare at and curse silently while we wait for the bus. Hmm, maybe that wasn’t such a bright idea after all … anyway the blag would be photos of all the crazy Menino-branded things in the city.

The other blag would be photographs of individual lost gloves which are strewn all over Boston. There are hundreds. A friend of mine had differing hypotheses about which hand of a glove would be most lost. Considering a large majority of the population is right handed, he posited that the right handed glove would be more frequently lost than the left, because people are more often removing the right handed glove. I think they would be equal. My preliminary data is inconclusive (n = like 5) but appears to favor the result of his hypothesis, though not necessarily the cause.

The lost gloves idea has been done before, which was funny to learn because they went all the way and tried to do perform the noble task of reuniting gloves. Oh well – these are likely two silly ideas of mine that won’t soon come to fruition. Someone with more time and interest in these oh-so-fascinating subjects should definitely take the initiative.

MacVim and gvimrc by example

It dawned on me that posting my .gvimrc file, which I use on Mac OS X exclusively with MacVim, might be instructive by example for people searching high and low on the interweb for this information (which I just did).

Let me back up a sec. The .gvimrc resource file is meant for the GUI version of the wonderful text editor vim. MacVim is a native GUI version of vim for Mac OS X folks. It is Sliced Bread. MacVim uses .gvimrc to tell it how to behave. MacVim also takes a peek at .vimrc (the general vim resource file), which I’ll post separately.

Gattaca arrives (in part)

I’ve always maintained that Gattaca is an important film because my generation would be encountering several of the raised issues within its lifetime. Here’s yet another manifestation of that, with the first steps toward designer babies. While I admit that on its face I’m uneasy with the idea, I am sure I’m not aware of the full range of the possible implications. It most certainly won’t eradicate all disease or make perfect humans. But the eerie line from Gattaca rings in my head:

“We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn’t need any more additional burdens. Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply, the best, of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.