Exploring Ubuntu

I've had a mild curiosity about the Linux operating system as an alternative to Windows for a long time.  Actually installing it always seemed like more trouble than I cared to bother with, but recently I have seen a few things that convinced me to look into it.

This post from Lifehacker about Portable Ubuntu convinced me that I could take a look at the Ubuntu version of Linux without doing anything more complicated than installing another program under Windows.  Portable Ubuntu installs everything it needs into a single folder on Windows, so it doesn't affect the regular Windows operating system at all.  You run Portable Ubuntu just like any other Windows program.  It appears as a toolbar with menus for Programs, Places (the file system) and System settings.  Although in most cases it doesn't run the same programs you would use in Windows, it does have programs that do all the same things I would normally do in Windows.  The only immediate problem I have is drawing 2D chemical structures, which I'll save for another post.

Portable Ubuntu convinced me that there's nothing scary, or even all that unfamiliar, in using Ubuntu instead of Windows.  But I have found that my Windows machine is increasingly a memory hog and running Portable Ubuntu at the same time only makes this worse.  I decided to take the next step and install Ubuntu outright.

The Ubuntu version of Linux is designed to be REALLY easy to use, especially for newbies.  You have lots of options for installing Ubuntu:

• turn on your computer with a Live CD in the diskdrive and you can run Ubuntu from the CD without installing anything on your hard drive.  Of course you can't save anything this way, and it is slow because the operating system has to read everything from the CD first.
• use the Live CD to install over Windows - if you don't want Windows anymore you can go to a Linux-only machine. 
• If you still want to have the option of running Windows you can partition the hard drive, leaving Windows intact one one partition and installing Linux into the other partition.
• If you don't want to partition you can use Wubi, which is what I decided to do.  Wubi installs Ubuntu into a folder - no partitioning required - and Windows is not affected.  When you turn on your computer, you will get a screen asking which operating system you want to run: Windows or Ubuntu.  One nice thing about Wubi, if you have internet access you don't even need the CD.  Wubi will download everything for you - of course downloading 700+ MB will take some time.

If you are a fan of Manga, check out this Manga Comic to see exactly how easy it is to install Ubuntu.  Why do the people in Manga look like they have fangs?  Link via BoingBoing.

Personally, I like to have the instructions to read.  Or at least a nice tutorial.  If you do too, take a look at the free Linux Starter Kit, from Linux Format magazine. Link via Greg Ladens blog.

More Easter Egg Fun on Your Computer

Check out some of the "goodies" hidden in the software you use.

I even got to look at the Linux Easter Eggs myself, since I had just installed Portable Ubuntu so that I could try-out a Linux operating system as easily as running a program on my Windows machine.  The "doctor" hidden in emacs really takes me back.  The first time I saw this program I was in college - in the pre-PC days when we all had accounts on the school's Vax mainframe computer. Then it was called Eliza, but the program itself is even older than that.

Lifehacker - Top 10 Software Easter Eggs

Video: Watch 10 terrific 'Easter eggs' in action  at Computerworld.com

There's some overlap between the two sites.  The Computerworld page has video clips of all the Easter Eggs so you can see what they look like even if you don't have the program or operating system involved. 

Fun with Mercury

The start of this clip may be a little confusing.  He's talking about mercury barometers being portable because they are short.  If you used water in your barometer it would have to be something like 32 feet tall.  Mercury barometers can be under a meter tall.

I don't recommend keeping vats of mercury like the one shown here.  Mercury is 13 times heavier than water and quite volatile, the mercury vapors are not good for your brain. Mercury poisoning is responsible for the expression "Mad as a hatter," since mercury was used in the making of felt.

via Cannonball floating in mercury - Boing Boing

Science Fun and Easter Eggs

No classes today and Friday, so I thought I would post a couple of Easter Egg links.  

Lifehacker has a post on an online egg timer for the uber-geek:  just select the temperature of your egg (Celsius), it's circumference (in cm), your elevation above sea level (meters) and how well done you would like your egg and it will calculate the time needed to cook.  Oh, and be forwarned, the site is in Norwegian.  If you are that eager to input the necessary variables to accurately calculate your cooking time, I'm sure that a little thing like not knowing the language won't be a problem.  

And as an added bonus, how often do you see the Angstrom symbol used in acutal words?

Kunsten å koke et egg (translation: Art of cooking an egg) [University of Oslo]

via  Lifehacker - Cook the Perfect Boiled Egg with the Power of Science - Holidays

Once you have cooked your Easter eggs, surely you will want to add a little color to them.  Of course, if you dye the shell you have to remove the decorative part before you can eat the egg.  Neatorama has a neat link to a way to decorate the egg that's inside the shell.

Edible Easter Eggs - Neatorama

Molecular Frameworks in Wired

The latest issue of Wired magazine has a chart of the top 30 molecular shapes in the Chemical Abstracts Service database of more than 24 million compounds.  Their definition of shape is based on rings and linkers which connect the rings, nothing else is considered: not the side chains attached to the rings or their connectors, presence of multiple bonds, or the elements involved.

As they point out many of the compounds listed are naturally occuring, or synthesized with natural compounds as the starting point or inspiration.  Not surprisingly, the most common shape they identify is a hexagon and the second most common is the pentagon. The preferred bond angles for most organic compounds are around either 109 degrees or 120 degrees. Four- and three-membered rings (squares and triangles) aren't that common in nature - they do not appear in any of the top 30 shapes.  These small rings have much smaller bond angles, and feel a lot of strain when forced to have such compressed bond angles.  5- and 6-membered rings have effectively zero ring strain and are very common in nature.  Larger rings can also have ring strain issues.

About half of the top 30 shapes include a pentagon, but there is one or more hexagons in every one of the top 30 shapes except for shape #2 which is a simple pentagon.

Wired:  Molecular Frameworks, the Building Blocks of All Life

Watch: Sita Sings the Blues

image by Nina Paley

The Ramayana is a Hindu epic that tells the story of Rama, a prince from the city of Ayodhya.  Sita Sings the Blues is a wonderful re-telling of the Ramayana told from the perspective of Rama's wife Sita.  It isn't a happy story: Sita goes into exile with Rama, she is kidnapped and rescued and her faithfulness questioned more than once.  

Nina Paley has put together a marvelous presentation of this story using several different styles of animation and music.  The story is interwoven with commentary by three shadow puppets as well as scenes from Ms. Paley's own life.  An integral part is the music of Annette Hanshaw, who made recordings in the 1920's and 30's.  It makes for a strange combination, Indian legend and Jazz Age music, but it works delightfully.

Nina Paley has made Sita Sings the Blues available for download, or you can watch the streaming video at www.thirteen.org  The artwork is beautiful, and the music is wonderful.  Make yourself comfortable, it's almost an hour and a half long, and worth every minute.

Sita Sings the Blues

Science Literacy Survey

The California Academy of Sciences, www.calacademy.org, recently conducted a telephone survey of scientific literacy.  There are 6 questions listed on their web site if you want to test yourself - I don't know if they asked other questions or just those 6.

I came across this by way of the links below at Slashdot.org and ScientificBlogging.com. The results of the survey aren't too surprising:  a lot of Americans don't know some very basic facts about the  earth.  However, I was especially interested in the readers' comments left at both of the posts.  I recommend reading them yourself.  A complaint of many was that the questions in the survey don't really measure any understanding of science, but rather they amount to mere trivia.  Understanding science, they argue, requires an understanding of the scientific method, experimental design and generally being skeptical and knowing how to judge the evidence.

Personally, I like (some) trivia.  But I understand the point - it isn't enough to just know some facts.  Given the importance of scientific knowledge and discoveries in everyday life, I think it is important for the public to have an understanding of how scientists figure out how things work.  Advertisers often tout some product as "clinically proven," or "scientifically tested."  The public should know what this means - and I would hope they could make a guess at when it is pure bullshit.

However, I think it is also important to know things.  And for that reason, trivia like the questions asked in the CalAcademy survey are worthwhile.  They probably have little impact on your daily life, but if you are to have any hope at judging the reliablity of what scientists (or politicians or advertisers) have to say, you need to know some of the relevant facts as well.

Slashdot | US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy

Science Literacy - American Adults 'Flunk' Basic Science, Says Survey