Category Archives: Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Cellular Automata and Tissue Engineering

I’m taking a tissue engineering course right now, (see previous post), and this has rekindled my interest in cellular automata. I was first introduced to them by Stephen Wolfram’s book, A New Kind of Science (freely available online). This is one of the books that helped me to understand how complex life can develop from relatively simple rules.

It’s led me to wonder how much tissue engineering experimentation could be done using 3D cellular automata. Tissue engineering requires all kinds of cell lines and biochemicals, incubation times, and so on, making it somewhat expensive and time consuming. The ability to model, say, mesenchymal stem cells with cellular automata could be used to ‘get a feel’ for tissue development with less time and expense.

I went looking for 3D cellular automata to play with, and came across this one:

Cellumat3D

Cellumat3D is a tool for simulating and exploring cellular automata in 3D space. The application uses OpenGL and is fast enough to give a good impression why cellular automata are regarded as part of artificial life research.

It’s a little obscure, and there’s not really any documentation that I’ve seen for setting up rules. I need to double-check the CVS code for documentation. The author also links to a bountiful resource page on 3D cellular automata. It looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while. At least some of the links work, including one to a java-based 3D simulator of the Game of Life. It’s pretty slick — you can grab and rotate it with the mouse and so on. Here’s another one that’s a little less intuitive but allows editing. Life3D looks interesting, but it’s only available for Windows.

If you know of any other 3D cellular automata for Linux/Unix/OS X please do pass them along in the comments or by email.

ADDENDUM: 2006-02-15 @ 21:04 CST – MathWorld has a page on cellular automata in Mathematica.

New WTUL recording script

Last year I posted about a script I wrote for recording WTUL (Tulane University’s radio station). Since Katrina, they’ve been running a different stream, rebroadcast by Stanford. It’s in the open-source OGG format, and it only took a small modification of the script to adapt to it. I’ve posted the new script. All of the directions are otherwise the same (and are on the script page). You still need mplayer and so on.

My New Home Network

In the last week or so I’ve finished setting up my home network. It includes

  • A Linksys WRT54GL
  • A Linksys NSLU2
  • A LaCie 500GB external disk
  • A Motorola SurfBoard cable modem

The WRT54GL is running a custom Linux firmware (DD-WRT), which allows me to tweak all kinds of settings (including radio power), log in with SSH, and if I solder an SD card onto the motherboard, load all sorts of additional software. The management software is much nicer than what it comes with.

The NSLU2 is also running a custom linux firmware (OpenSlug). It’s somewhat Debian-like. I added a 1GB memory stick to one of its USB ports, and hooked up the LaCie 500GB external disk to the other. The operating system resides on the 1GB memory stick, while I serve files, run backups, and serve iTunes music (with mt-daapd) from the 500GB drive. The iTunes music shows up as a shared library on the macs, available for streaming. The custom firmware also allows the use of a usb hub. Once I get one, I’m probably going to hook the printer up to it, and use it for print serving as well.

The cable modem doesn’t do much. It just hooks us up to the ‘net. Here’s a picture of the set-up. Notice the penguin in a slug suit on the NSLU2 (because the devices are referred to as slugs).

Home network

Posting through Bluetooth and My New Treo 650

With three sales tax free days, some free time to get accustomed to a new device, and a dying Treo 600, I finally bit the bullet and just bought the Treo 650. This means that I can now use my phone as a modem over Bluetooth, and I get a connection speed of around 75 kbps according to 2wire. This is phenomenal, as it means that I don’t need to find a WiFi connection for basics like e-mail, blogging, and reading blogs as long as my phone has a connection.

Even though some of that stuff can be done from the phone itself (which is totally sweet, by the way) it’s nice when available to use my PowerBook instead. It has a 1440×900 17″ wide screen and a full-sized keyboard. This is definitely not the case with the Treo.

The camera seems to be much better than on the Treo 600. It works much better in low light situations. The Treo 600 camera was basically useless unless you were outside in broad daylight.

Here’s a picture I snapped of some graffiti in New Orleans:

Someone's tagging with my name!

It seems there’s an thug artist who shares my name in the city.

As you may have inferred from the title, this post and the upload of the photo have been done using my Treo’s connection over Bluetooth. I happen to think that’s pretty cool.

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