Monthly archives: October, 2011

Oct312011October 31, 2011October 31, 20111Commentby L.

No homemade cables

Posted in Hardware

One of Josh Trachtenberg’s rules that I have adopted is “No Homemade Cables”. It’s so natural to think that this is the best solution to hook two things up:…

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Oct242011October 24, 2011October 23, 20110Commentby L.

Armchair quarterback the NIH budget

Posted in Tips

Think you could do a better job allocating the NIH budget? This is your chance to…

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Oct232011October 23, 2011October 23, 20111Commentby L.

Streamlined & simple prototyping to custom PCB

Posted in Hardware, Software

Fritzing is PCB design software (EDA) in the spirit of Arduino and Processing. It’s open source, cross-platform, streamlined, and simple to use. It doesn’t do simulations, but you can lay out your circuit in a GUI that looks like a prototyping board, then move…

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Oct172011October 17, 2011October 20, 20111Commentby L.

Photon counting, addendum

Posted in Hardware, Tips

Let me add some clarification to the hybrid PMT post.

The actual signal that comes off of a PMT in response to a photon is a pulse of current. The…

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Oct172011October 17, 2011October 15, 20110Commentby L.

More Spectra, Please

Posted in Tips

George McNamara is planning on updating the massive PubSpectra (previously mentioned here).

He’s currently soliciting submissions. Do you have any to contribute?

(link)

…

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Oct162011October 16, 2011October 16, 20111Commentby L.

Photon counting with Hybrid PMTs

Posted in Hardware

Hybrid PMTs have made their way into fluorescence microscopy and are competing with GaAsP PMTs. (Well, actually, Hamamatsu makes both types, so it’s not really competition in that…

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Oct152011October 15, 2011October 15, 20115Commentsby L.

Synchronizing multiple computers for experiments

Posted in Software

In many rigs, multiple computers are used, and they need to talk to each other. For example, one computer handles the imaging,…

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Oct082011October 8, 2011October 8, 20110Commentby L.

Books online for free from the NIH

Posted in Tips

Within the PubMed architecture, there are a lot of resources, visible on the pulldown list next to the search field. If you browse down a bit, you’ll see “Books”. (direct link)

These are HTML-formatted…

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Oct032011October 3, 2011October 3, 201121Commentsby L.

Osmometer tech – Vapor or Freezing point?

Posted in Hardware

I’ve used Wescor Vapro osmometers for a long time. Specifically, the model pictured above. They’re nice machines. But now I think freezing point osmometers are better. In this post I’ll talk about why.

The Wescor Vapro…

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Oct022011October 2, 2011September 28, 20110Commentby L.

OSX: Spotlight problem

Posted in Software, Tips

Quick OSX tip: if you’re finding that your OSX system is quite busy even though you haven’t asked anything of it, check to see if the processes “mds” and “mdworker” are chewing up CPU cycles (view active processes in Activity Monitor).

If so, then…

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Oct012011October 1, 2011September 27, 20113Commentsby L.

Sense of scale

Posted in Uncategorized

The vast majority of the time, I buy what I intend to. Like the old maxim from construction: “Measure twice, cut once”, I always take care to ensure I’m ordering the right thing. At least when things are expensive. When they’re cheap, I’m less…

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