The stoned Rock’n’Roll Bridge
Rock’n’Roll Bridge, Epireus, Greece
Author: mattions
Companion planting in a pot
I’m testing companion planting in a pot, trying out Tomatoes (Hillibilly at seeds stage), Basil and Parcely. We’ll se how it goes.
Posting here merely to remember what happened.
Kitegen comes back to fly
[slideshow]
I’m very happy to read (link in Italian) that Kitegen has started the automatic testing for take off and landing at Sommariva site.
I just report the main points written in the post which I think they are interesting, without going into a full english translation:
- first of all, they have managed to perform a take off with only 1.5 m/s wind speed at the ground, which is remarkable given the fact this wind speed is very small. Considering that the wind speed in Europe is around 3 m/s this is a great achievement.
- the next step they are planning is to test how long the kite can fly without interruption, to achieve
5000 hours of continuous flight5000 hours per year. H/T Stefano
All in all, it seems the control software is getting ready for the field, and I can’t wait to see the development during spring and summer!
Goodies: Link to the video!
Making playlist with Android
If you would like to make a playlist based on the content on the folder on your droid, just open a terminal, go to the folder where the music is and run
$ls | sort | grep mp3 > "$(basename "$(pwd)")".m3u
and magically you have the playlist..
which looks like this:
04 - Pennywise - Fuck authority.ofn.mp3
07 - A Perfect Government.mp3
07 - Pearl Jam - Do The Evolution.mp3
13 - Goldfinger - 99 Red Balloons .mp3
Nirvana - 03 - Come As You Are.mp3
Oasis - Live Forever.mp3
Offspring - Smash - 05 - Genocide.mp3
System Of A Down - Aeralis.mp3
System Of A Down - Spiders.mp3
03 Whatever Happened to My Rock 'N Roll.wma
the last one is a wma, and if you don’t have time/will to convert it to mp3 can be added with:
$ls | sort | grep wma >> "$(basename "$(pwd)")".m3u
Tip found here
Neuronvisio 0.8.0 out in the wild
A Pyramidal Neuron model visualized with Neuronvisio
We have just released a new version of Neuronvisio, which depends on Mayavi 4.1.x. All the goodies are described in the docs, but I want to highlight an aspect of this release which is pretty important.
When we have ported Neuronvisio, from Mayavi 3.4 to Mayavi 4.1.0, two regression bugs popped out: Issues #32 and Issue #34 .
The good thing about issue #34 was that it was gone in the 4.1.1.dev version of traitsui, therefore we had just to depend on the development snapshot, however the story was different for #32. The bug was difficult to replicate, and it seems to not be deterministic. After investigating the problem, I’ve managed to isolate and set up a Pull Request which actually fixes it https://github.com/enthought/mayavi/pull/23.
While the Pull Request was still to be accepted in the main tree of Mayavi, we wanted to distribute it out there, because Neuronvisio paper is under reviewing, and the Reviewers had several trouble to install the version 0.7.3, which depends on Mayavi 3.4. We managed to package both traitsui and Mayavi and make them as required dependencies of the new Neuronvisio, and using the special version requirement in the pavement, we could make the installation as automatic as possible.
All in all, to install the latest version of Neuronvisio, depending on the latest version of Traitsui and the patched version of Mayavi 4.1.1.dev a user has to run
pip install -U --extra-index-url=http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~mattioni/snapshots/ neuronvisio
which I think it’s pretty neat.
With the new version out, we didn’t want to remove the old docs, ’cause the version are quite different and same information applying to one version in particular. Some of our user may don’t want to update to the latest version, so we have now Neuronvisio docs hosted to the beautiful Read The Docs, at http://readthedocs.org/projects/neuronvisio/ where you can choose the docs according to the version.
How to fix github-tools when it doesn’t update the docs
Note to memory: when github-tools explodes and doesn’t work anymore, just double check the submodule in .gitsubmodule.
Remove it and recreate it.
BibServer and BibSoup: sharing distributed bibliographies
My bibliography visualized on bibsoup
The openbiblio group from OpenKnowledge Foundation has came up with a nifty idea: sharing all the bibliographies, without trying to make the golden bibliography, but actually making easy to share everybody bibliography in a easy way.
The current implementation is at bibserver, while you can upload your own biblio using bibsoup.
I’ve uploaded also mine, which opens the post with a bubble chart visualization, and you can browse also here: http://bibsoup.net/mattions/computational_neuroscience
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Happy New Year! (It’s only few days the Chinese one has started ehehehe) It’s the Tiger year if you are wondering.
P.S.: Just discovered the report only now, and I though it was good idea to share :). Usually I follow the western calendar.. Usually..
Is eating local possible?
Given to the advance of peak oil, changing to a more sustainable living is becoming a must from a maybe. In this view, the transition movement is doing pretty well, and here in Cambridge the Transition Cambridge movement is also gaining traction. A lot of actions, completely grassroot, are under taking place and getting recognised. Check out for example the last post about growing spaces.
A very brave initiative is been carried on by 6 people of the Cambridge Carbon Footprint, where they decided to try to eat local. I think it’s very good idea and they are blogging about it here.
Here an image of the last Friday supper
On the same note, an initiative to make local food easier to spot is undergoing and I’m personally working on it. It’s called sustainablesouk.com, and you can stay tuned it either subscribing to the form, or just keeping in touch to be sure to know when we are going to give it a kick 🙂
Growing spaces gets funding from Cambridge council
Directly from the Cambridge News, Growing Spaces, a Transition Cambridge Project, gets funding from the council:
Cllr Sian Reid, the authority’s leader, said: “It is very encouraging to see how many enthusiastic and dedicated groups we have working to protect and enhance our local environment for the benefit of us all.
“I am so pleased the council is able to provide this extra support to projects that echo our commitment to climate change reduction and sustainable living.”
The project to grow food on disused pieces of land received £3,000 and is being organised by the Transition Cambridge group, which has already planted fruit bushes and herbs at five places in the city, including Norfolk Street, Chesterton Road and Hawkins Road.
Organiser Stephanie Ferguson, 27, said the combined food production capacity of all the wasted bits of land in the city was massive.
She said: “We’re trying to rejuvenate pieces of land which have fallen into disrepair while at the same time starting a new source of local food.”
Very well done to Stephanie! She helped out at our Transition Food Group Stall at Mill Road Winter Fair.
Thanks to Ivan to have picked it up and signalled in the Transition Food group MailingList.