tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64331439547264390572011-11-28T08:48:32.543+08:00My RamblingsAsif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.comBlogger301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-72065556283167025412010-03-28T11:43:00.003+08:002010-03-28T11:54:31.888+08:00

When I first setup Vista bootcamp and more recently Win 7 bootcamp, I had this annoying problem where the screen flickered for a while before becoming clear. This problem seemed to do something with the video driver, and the driver provided even by the latest bootcamp version (3.1) did not help. The flicker time was minimized when I updated the video driver with what was suggested by Windows

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-69138906610363680822009-05-19T22:07:00.001+08:002009-05-19T22:10:36.568+08:00

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-63657161127261922602009-05-19T22:05:00.003+08:002009-05-19T22:15:50.825+08:00

It takes about 10000 hours to become an expert in something (Malcolm Gladwell).This is approximately 1000 human days (discounting sleep, toilet breaks and other non working hours), which is approximately 3 years, which is equivalentto the time taken by a student to complete his PhD. This means that at the end of the PhD, a student should be better than his supervisor because he or she spent

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-4660982041832836452009-02-17T15:31:00.003+08:002009-02-17T15:38:40.336+08:00

Science makes us feel stupid because we do not have the answers to what we are investigating..apparently, according to Martin Schwartz this feeling is good and important for scientific research to progress..read on here.Science is then not for those who got to have all the answers and do not like to feel stupid. That should make it easy for a large number of people to decide whether to take the

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-54609451654640557572009-02-17T15:10:00.003+08:002009-02-17T15:28:43.121+08:00

Another dogma shattered! Time to re-write the textbooks :)==NEWS source: http://www.embl.de/aboutus/news/press/press09/25jan09/index.html==Heidelberg, Germany and Hinxton, UK (OBBeC) - Researchers in the groups of Lars Steinmetz at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and Wolfgang Huber at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-75906129758847478792009-01-31T00:08:00.005+08:002009-01-31T01:00:40.151+08:00

==Understanding Unix Environment=={This is still work in progress..}===Unix File System===* Hierarchical File SystemThe Unix File System is a hierarchical file system.* / is root of the system* /var is a directory in root* /var/www is the full path of the sub-directory in "var"* /var/www/htdocs is the full path of the sub-sub-directory in "/var/www" and so on...1. Know where you are: '''pwd''':

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-10780562160933396992009-01-24T15:21:00.006+08:002009-01-25T19:17:12.345+08:00

Below is a recommendation by a peer to an interesting article for people starting in the biomedical science field:"Jonathan Yewdell published an interesting essay in Nature Reviews Mol Cell Biol recently. The essay is an odd mix of massively discouraging and heart-warming. He starts by basically telling all young PIs to run for their lives away from a career in academic research, due in part

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-44538757252247315632009-01-24T14:27:00.013+08:002009-02-03T18:11:28.918+08:00

One can use Blastcl3, the NCBI BLAST network client, to remotely connect to the NCBI BLAST servers to run automated BLAST searches. No web browser is required, you don't have to wait in front of the computer for the results and can perform "batch" search of many sequences against the databases at one time. The results of the search using this Network Blast will be identical to that of

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-83310095622326135622008-09-25T22:47:00.009+08:002011-04-25T08:50:55.518+08:00

Below are important Mac keyboard shortcuts that I have gathered from the web and from my reading of the popular Mac Magazines, such as Macworld. 1. Cmd+shift+A: Opens Applications folder while in Finder 2. Cmd (double click): Opens a folders in a new Finder window 3. Option+drag: Copies a file instead of moving it in the Finder 4. Cmd+option+drag: Makes an alias of selected item(s) 5. Cmd+delete

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-36257964872286836252008-08-02T14:27:00.009+08:002008-08-03T12:43:03.428+08:00

Different researchers have different ways of preparing their figures for publication purposes. I used to use Adobe Photoshop for this purpose. However, I almost always used to lose some quality when transferring the figure from the MS Word or Power point to Photoshop. With the recent advancement in the ability of software like Adobe Acrobat 8 in handling images, I have identified a method that

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-82170795710107058992008-07-28T03:49:00.004+08:002008-08-02T14:03:54.299+08:00

I used to be one of those who used to think that there was no right-clicking function in Mac, and this was one of the reasons that kept me away from Mac for many years. I noticed that I was not alone into thinking this, most Windows users thought the same and still do. Luckily this stopped for me when a friend showed me how one can get the right-click function in Mac. Having been a mac user for

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-19632127900578236852008-07-28T03:39:00.002+08:002008-07-28T03:45:44.714+08:00

Having so many email accounts, I have always wished for a way to organize their order of appearance/listing in Thunderbird. This functionality is not available in Thunderbird (TB) itself, but now thanks to "Chuonthis" this functionality is made available to TB through an add-on extension Folderpane. For information on how to install and use Folderpane, read this.

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-2881974280001375552008-07-28T03:22:00.003+08:002008-07-28T03:39:35.052+08:00

Ahh! I finally came across something I was wanting to find for a long time now - the mapping of Macbook keyboard to Windows Keyboard. It is all available at Apple Support Page. The link also provides help page for other Mac keyboard types. This is very useful for Boot Camp users, especially for the newbies.Another useful find while going through Apple support page: Finding Windows keys on Macbook

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-38726297469850202512008-07-13T15:00:00.005+08:002008-07-13T15:19:32.389+08:00

Few days ago, a friend recommended to me a fascinating article about the theory behind perception and how it works. The article starts and centers around M who suffers from severe itch and describes her journey in recovering from it..somewhere in the middle it introduces the classical theory behind perception and how the latest advancements made over the past decades are shifting the balance

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-55204236583524656312008-07-11T20:35:00.002+08:002008-07-11T20:42:04.139+08:00

My journal club review of the paper entitled "De Novo Design of Peptide Immunogens That Mimic the Coiled Coil Region of Human T-cell Leukemia Virus Type-1 Glycoprotein 21 Transmembrane Subunit for Induction of Native Protein Reactive Neutralizing Antibodies" by Roshni Sundaram, Marcus P. Lynch, Sharad V. Rawale, Yiping Sun, Mirdad Kazanji, and Pravin T. P. Kaumaya, published in The Journal of

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-39333480456509438402008-07-10T20:31:00.007+08:002008-07-13T21:11:02.423+08:00

My journal club review of the paper entitled “Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern human” by Ingman, M., Kaessmann, H., Pääba, S. & Gyllensten, U, published in Nature (volume 408, pg. 708-713) in the year 2000.==Introduction==Mitochondria are omnipresent throughout the eukaryotic domain (with very few exceptions) (Burger et al., 2003). This double membrane organelle of most

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-88868700384090712392008-06-30T00:48:00.001+08:002008-10-03T09:12:27.069+08:00

Yes, that is right, do not install BootCamp update 2.1 for Vista (i am not sure if the XP version causes the same problem), which provides Apple hardware drivers, unless you want to have an intermittent problem of keyboard and mouse freeze/hang. I learned it the hardway. This problem was not there with BootCamp 2.0, which came preloaded with the OS X Leopard CD. However, uninstalling BootCamp 2.1

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-25273318302809893362008-06-30T00:28:00.000+08:002008-06-30T00:45:52.196+08:00

When I was synchronizing my thunderbird mail folder between Mac Leopard and Vista, I accidentally pressed the stop button when the progress was half-way through. When I restarted Thunderbird, I was getting an error saying that "Thunderbird is not able to connect to the Imap….server because the SSL protocol is disabled" (in both Leopard and Vista). I searched Google but no luck. I then tried

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-75110222416385303622008-06-29T19:28:00.000+08:002008-12-10T13:30:17.013+08:00

For many days, I have been searching online for a way to quickly create new MS Office documents directly in the working folder that I am in, without the need to click on the MS Office application icon, whether on the dock or in the applications folder. In Windows, this is achevied easily by just right-clicking in the working directory, click on the "New" menu and then select the MS Office

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-23371812452603969212008-06-25T19:01:00.002+08:002008-12-10T13:30:17.258+08:00

I have read at many places about how wonderful the Automator program in Leopard is, but never found the need to give it a try and validate its usefulness by myself. Finally, today I got to use it as it turned out to be the solution to my long-standing problem of "how to synchronize emails between Leopard and Boot Camp Vista?".I use Thunderbird for my email needs and I really like it, especially

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-73252012284819139812008-06-17T02:16:00.002+08:002008-12-10T13:30:17.608+08:00

When I was working with Word docs on the stand alone Vista using Boot Camp, I occasionally got the error message "Word has stopped working", followed by the following message:"Word cannot open the file ~WRS(25A9155-508F-4C19-8D8A-A2DFAF672C8C). If the file is stored on your computer there may be a problem with your hardware. If the file is stored on the network there may be a problem with the

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-83566269710301730462008-06-15T20:53:00.000+08:002008-06-15T21:14:15.379+08:00

Today I came across an interesting article at Problogger about what Thomas Edison can teach us about blogging . Thomas Edison was, undoubtedly, one of those inventors that left an ever-lasting legacy, with world changing technologies, such as the light bulb, phonograph and the motion picture camera. I felt that the quotes mentioned in the article were also relevant to science and since they

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-27421395887234635452008-06-15T02:03:00.002+08:002009-03-11T12:22:02.148+08:00

 A. Network Windows Printing Via Samba in LeopardMy office printer is connected to a Windows XP machine and setting up the Macbook to print on this machine over the network was a big headache. This was not obvious at all in Leopard and the Mac help page was useless. After some extensive Google search, I managed to solve the problem and now can easily send print jobs. This feat was achieved by

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-76371024578111077842008-06-15T01:29:00.000+08:002008-06-15T02:02:46.245+08:00

I have been wanting to hook-up the 20" Dell LCD at work to the Macbook as extended display. I explored this in Leopard and found that setting the Dell as extended desktop was easy - use the "Displays" program in the "Systems preferences" and simply click on the "detect display" button. Mirroring (you see the same desktop on both the laptop and the Dell) was also easy - simply click on the mirror

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-39527126785937251282008-06-15T01:06:00.000+08:002008-06-15T01:20:06.941+08:00

Leopard allows direct reading of NTFS drive but not writing to it. I could write to my Vista Boot Camp drive (NTFS) while running Leopard by use of Parallels Desktop. However, this is slow and inconvenient if one wants to write to many files and folders. It would be nice to directly write to the NTFS drive without the speed lag and running Parallels. As usual, I did my homework using Google and

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-54791730308744404002008-06-12T23:24:00.007+08:002009-04-20T19:58:10.454+08:00

Below I summarize my experience of setting up MS Windows (Vista) on Mac machine (OS X Leopard 10.5.2) using Boot Camp Assistant and Parallels Desktop:1. While in Leopard, I used Boot Camp Assistant to create a partition to setup MS Windows Vista.2. Rebooted the system and installed Vista on the new partition. The installation was successful but not smooth, had some problems, which I will discuss

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-48896935818409485742008-06-12T17:59:00.001+08:002008-06-12T17:59:48.134+08:00

Recently, for my research work, I obtained access to a powerful black coloured Macbook with the following specs:* OS: Mac OS X 10.5.3 (code named "Leopard")* 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo* 4GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB* 250GB Serial ATA drive @ 5400 rpm* Superdrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)* Keyboard/Mac OS* Country Kit* AirPort Extreme built-in* Bluetooth 2.0 built-inI have always been a great fan of

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-31278568738674973122008-06-12T16:45:00.000+08:002008-06-26T12:04:15.277+08:00

I have completed the following two of my "Big" goals:1) Passed my PhD qualifying exam (PQE)2) Published the pan-DENV paperFirst, I am going to talk about the PhD qualifying exam. I am happy that the university has this system in place to help graduate students like me assess our work done so far and ask ourselves how do they fit with the big picture or the theme of our thesis. Another advantage

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-26275914173765146892008-06-06T16:35:00.000+08:002008-07-09T20:35:24.397+08:00

Position offered : Teaching AssistantLocation : Bioinformatics Lab, Department of Biochemistry, National University of SingaporeDescription : We are seeking a motivated Teaching Assistant for a full-time teaching position to conduct bioinformatics practical and tutorials. Ample opportunities will be provided to enhance your technical and teaching skills.Requirements :- MSc preferred;

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6433143954726439057.post-138793655077784682008-02-28T17:14:00.000+08:002008-06-12T16:22:41.698+08:00

The months ahead in this year 2008 are going to be challenging ones for me as I aim to achieve several "BIG" personal goals (in addition to the "BIG" work related goals), which are going to play key roles in determining the events that will unfold for me in the year 2009. I hope by writing them here in the blog, I will be able to remind myself about them from time to time, keep focus and

Asif M. Khanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08184259065143974222noreply@blogger.com0