A blog about free software, public health issues and probably everything else too …
Month: December 2006
It’s a bit late to wish you a merry Christmas (if you celebrate this event). But it’s still time to wish you a happy new year 2007. 🙂 And now, a little video-clip/remake from Boymongoose (some background about India needed).
You like Indian self-satire? Here is Welcome to the Laddu shop (after 50 Cent “Candy shop”) and Curry n Spice girl (after Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”) (a lot of background about India needed). OK now, back to real work …
While reading the GnomeFr planet, I found this nice article to save documents on my university backup system (written by Steve Frécinaux).
This evening, we attended a wonderful concert of Shahid Parvez at Bozar. He plays the sitar and was accompanied by tabla and tanpura. As usual, it’s better to hear a live concert rather than a CD. I was also delighted by the games played between the tabla player and Shahid Parvez 😀 No photos since I didn’t dare to disturb the performance.
The whole day, I was busy working with DeCyder, a software to analyse spots of proteins in 2D gels. I hope I won’t dream of small red/yellow/green dots tonight:
The software use a 3D representation of the spot. If we change this view too fast (either by moving it or by quickly browsing through spots), the graphic diplay freezes and we fall back to an ugly VGA mode (screenshot below). Since the morning, the computer crashed 7 times! I reduced the screen resolution to 1024x768pixels in 24bits colours and it seems to work correctly now. 🙂
On Saturday, we participated in the ISAL Christmas party. I did a 15 minutes presentation on Belgium for our Indian friends, Shreyas did a mime game (with some very funny participations) and Alam came dressed up like Santa Claus 🙂
Some photos are available on the ISAL photo album.
This evening, we went to see Mallika Sarabhai dancing Kuchipudi at Bozar. Kuchipudi is a dance from South India. It looks a little bit like Bharatanatyam (with my non-specialists eyes) but with more contact with the audience (or is it the way it was performed by these specific dancers?).
I think that if you want to see only one dance from India, you have to see Bharata Natyam. If you want a gentle introduction to Indian dance, Kuchipudi can be more accessible.
Hi
This is my first post with the Jadoo blog engine. As I stated before, I was planning to write my own blog software with these goals:
I’ll try to apply the "release soon, release often" principle (where does it came from?): before writing an entry, launch jadwrite.py ; to create html files, launch jadpub.py ; then upload html files with your FTP client (scripts are highly customized for my blog, for the moment ; and everything doesn’t respect all the standards). I’ll also to retrieve all my previous posts (but the URL will be changed ; the RSS URL also changed). But for the moment, I have other important work to do … There is no system for comments for the moment (I don’t know if there will be one in the future) but you can send me comments and requests to jepoirrier@gmail.com.
Oh yes, and I’ll try to add a decent CSS 🙂
Yesterday, we went for the Bazaar organised by the Bozar. While people were selling Indian bibelots and food (yummy!), Nandini set up a “Spice Corner” where she exposed and explained everything about Indian spices (you could even taste Pan Masala!). She had quite a success but, unfortunately for some visitors, Nandini did not sell anything. Our famous Peter also had a table for Rose vzw that was represented by Swapna (they were still there on Sunday).
The Bazaar was held in the Horta hall where we also were able to see performances by a folk Rajasthan group, a Bhangra group and two would-be Bollywood actors 😉 The theme was, obviously, Popular India.
In the evening we went to hear Asha Bhosle, the Queen of Bollywood songs. Although she has her age, listening to her real voice is a totally different experience than listening to a CD or watching a song from a film on DVD. I found this concert great!
If you are interested in India, there are still some very nice evenings to spend in Bruxelles. Have a look at the Bozar website!
ISAL is inviting you to the annual Christmas party, full of spices and fun.
It will be held on Saturday, December 16th 2006 (19.00 hour = 07.00 PM), at Holy Spirit College, Naamsestraat 40, B-3000, Leuven. You can find the menu (veg and non-veg) and other details on the Christmas party webpage.
This week is very stressful because I am doing a 2200+ euros 2D-DIGE experiment (*) on samples from a rat organ we never studied before and from which I cannot obtain any more new samples.
We found a new pattern of proteins dispersion (compared to our previous experiments on other organs) and, more importantly, we found a clear difference in protein expression in at least 2 spots. In the image below, all the whitish spots mean proteins in these spots are found in equal amounts in the 3 conditions. But spots in red or green mean proteins expressed at different levels (even on/off) between conditions!
Now, we’ll have to perform a more mathematical/quantitative exploration of these expression patterns and hopefully identify these interesting proteins by mass spectrometry.
(*) 5nmol of Cy dyes (proteins labelling molecules) cost 2215 euros and weight something like 2.75*10-6g! I used nearly all that amount for my experiment. And I don’t take into account the 3-lasers scanner and common lab reagents
Jean-Etienne's blog 