Solving technology problems, one at a time
Because I don’t use the command line that much, I usually forget this incredibly simple thing when it comes up: how to change to another drive using the command line (the DOS prompt). For example
Continue readingAfter a recent update to Firefox, all my precious debugging extensions disappeared. The Add-on’s window showed nothing installed. This post on the MozillaZine Forums explained how to force Firefox to rescan your addons and get
Continue readingFor the last week I’ve been getting “Startup disk is almost full” messages, and spent a lot of time cleaning house, only to have it nearly full again the next day. The X Lab suggests
Continue readingDownload File These brushes were derived from Durer’s engraving St Anthony At The City. Create your own remix of a 16th century town! Let me know if you create something nice with them, I’d like
Continue readingDownload file I’ve been experimenting a little with dual brushes. The ones here are good for producing multi-hued textures and backgrounds. They will automatically shift color, size, etc. Drop me a line if you use
Continue readingJavascript is a loosely typed language, which means it is possible to define a variable without specifying what type of data it holds (string, integer, floating point, etc.). This can cause problems if you think a particular value is a number when in fact it is a string. A string must be converted to a number to use it in calculations.
For example, when working with SCORM elearning software, scoring and performance data is stored in a Learning Management System as strings. If you need to do calculations with the data after retrieving it, the string data must be converted to integers or floating point type.
The parseInt() function can be used for this purpose. It parses a string and returns an integer. However use of the function without understanding the details can lead to unexpected results. If your string begins with a zero, the number will be evaluated in octal instead of decimal system. In Octal, 08, 09 are not valid numbers, and 010, 011, etc. will not represent the same values as they would in decimal system.
Continue readingUpdate, Nov. 26, 2007 The cub has been named Zhen Zhen!
Here’s a photo diary of the as-yet-unnamed female panda cub born August 3 at the San Diego Zoo. The little panda is the fourth cub of Bai Yun, a panda that arrived from China in 1996.
To read the latest news on the Giant Pandas at the zoo, CLICK HERE
Continue readingThere is much happening in genetics it’s hard to know where to start listing the highlights. Here are some of the more interesting items I’ve come across recently:
Did DNA replication evolve twice independently?
by Leipe DD, Aravind L, Koonin EV. in
Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Sep 1;27(17):3389-401.
DNA replication is central to all extant cellular organisms.
principal proteins involved in transcription and translation, which are highly conserved in all divisions of life.
We performed detailed sequence comparisons of the proteins that fulfill indispensable functions in DNA replication and classified them.
When developing an xml-based application, you may come across the need to include HTML data in xml nodes. The problem is that unless this data is escaped in some way, it is interpreted as xml and will cause a malformed structure. The easiest way I’ve found so far to use a CDATA attribute to escape the code automatically. Then, when you are creating an xsl fragment to edit or display the data, use
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