Monthly Archives: October 2007

Using Google Notebook as a Lab Notebook

I love Moleskine notebooks, first of all. I have used them as lab notebooks for the last 2-3 years, and they are excellent all around. However, they suffer from the main drawbacks of hard copy anything:

  1. They only exist in one place at a time.
  2. They are not searchable in any modern sense of the word.
  3. Sometimes I can’t read my own writing [not a drawback for everyone].

Before Moleskines I kept my logs on our lab wiki, but that was a bit cumbersome.

Enter Google Notebook. I’ve written about other reasons to use Google Notebook before, and around the time I made that post I started using it as a lab notebook as well, but I wanted to give it a trial run for a couple of months before posting about it.

A couple of months have passed, and here I am. I’ve settled on the following format:

  1. One notebook per month: Each month, I create a new dedicated monthly notebook.
  2. Old notebooks are moved to Google Docs: It is possible to export a notebook directly to Google Docs. This is a more appropriate place for a long-term, large collection of documents, and it keeps the Notebook uncluttered.
  3. One entry per day: I started off with each logged item in its own entry. This became cumbersome. Now, I use one entry per day, with timestamps throughout the entry whenever a new item is added.

In contrast to the Moleskine, or other paper journals, this one is present everywhere that I have internet access, and is completely searchable with Google juice. I’ll post on it again after another few months’ use if I have any further insights or enlightening experiences.

Prelude and Fugue in A Minor (BWV 543)

While reading I Am a Strange Loop, I was reminded of my love for the music of J.S. Bach. I haven’t listened to classical music much lately, but I used to listen to it all of the time. I’ve been listening to 80s music, Alternative and Indie rock, and smatterings of this and that pop music, and I’ve been tiring of it.

Back to Bach.

I first fell in love with the music of J.S. Bach when listening to my father’s CD recording of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) played on the pipe organ by Peter Hurford. I would hook four speakers up to my computer, one in each corner of my bedroom, crank up the volume, close my eyes, and feel my ribs vibrate with the lower notes. Pure bliss (kind of like Alex and his Ludwig van, but less psychotic).

Hofstadter mentioned a few of his favorite pieces (“The Great” BWV 542, for example) and I went looking for a compilation of some of them on pipe organ on the Amazon MP3 Store, and found this wonderful album. While listening to it, I found a new favorite: Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543. Dark, moving, powerful, and rich. You really should buy just that track and listen to Hurford’s excellent rendition. However, there’s a recording available free here (click “Residence”) that’s not bad. (Found via the excellent and totally free Classic Cat). Hurford, by the way, made his name playing Bach on organ and was/is something of a prodigy. Really do listen to his version. The difference between it and the free one, partially due to the apparent acoustic differences, is like the difference between night and day.

This post is dedicated to parenthetical statements (as it contains many of them).

PHPMyGTD “bug free” (ha!)

My pet project is coming along well. Tonight I made a bunch of UI improvements, and eliminated every single bug from my to-fix list.

There are still some more UI things that really should be fixed (like chiding the user for incorrect date input rather than simply adding an item with no due date), but I think I’ll probably have a beta release to post as a downloadable package on SourceForge soon.

Along with that will come a document page showing and explaining the UI.

Device handles chest compression part of CPR

Thanks to my grandma Tice for sending me this article:

The Lucas system runs on high-pressure air from either a compressed air tank or an air wall outlet in a hospital. The device is indicated for treating adults who have acute circulatory arrest – meaning they lack spontaneous breathing and pulse – as well as loss of consciousness.

Mechanical compression allows medical personnel to provide other therapies, the company said. The machine also should provide quality chest compressions for a longer period of time than a human can.

A 1995 study found that fatigue makes it difficult for even well-trained medical personnel to provide more than one minute’s worth of effective chest compressions, said Anne Devine, a Medtronic spokeswoman.

“Clearly these devices do much better compressions than humans do,” said Dr. Charles Lick, medical director of Allina Medical Transportation in Minneapolis.

Sounds kind of difficult to use, but apparently the EMTs like them enough that they’re putting them in ambulances.