Index

Metabolism & Nutrition – Lecture 2: Energy metabolism

The second lecture in the Metabolism & Nutrition course was delivered by Bert Groen, from the department of Pediatrics. [It was originally planned after the Fat metabolism lecture, which was rescheduled for the day after, due to Janine's absence the previous day.] The unifying thread in this lecture is how metabolic pathways that have evolved for efficient energy use and storage pose serious health threats in the current age of abundant calory-dense food. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 20, 2015, at 09:03 | 3 comments

Using papercite WordPress plugin for academic note-taking

During most of my bachelor, I've used paper and pen or pencil to take notes. Halfway my second minor [Okasys], though, I switched to my laptop and LaTeX, which I preferred, because typing is faster than writing and reworking my notes into a halfway decent summary usually proved too time-consuming with hand-written notes. Admittedly, though, although reorganizing my notes became easier with LaTeX, I still didn't really get to the finished summary stage, because I'm still way too obsessive-compulsive about the whole thing, most of the time. Now, since I figured I use my blog for all sorts of notes, I can just as well let WordPress and Google do some of the organizing for me, while taking notes for my present course. I just have to be a bit more careful about copyright issues (but, if the need strikes, I can always set a post to private). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 19, 2015, at 14:03 | 1 comment

Metabolism & Nutrition – Eatmeter

One of the tutorials for the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course involves keeping a food log for at least 5 days. During the introductory lecture today, we were told to use the “My diary” (NL: Mijn dagboek) function offered by the Dutch Voedingscentrum. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 22:03 | 4 comments

Metabolism & Nutrition – Lecture 1: Introduction

Janine Kruit, as the coordinator of the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, delivered the introductory lecture today, a day late, because she was too sick to teach yesterday. The altered course schedule is now available on the course's Nestor environment [Blackboard]. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 22:03 | 1 comment

Metabolism & Nutrition – Editorial on metabolic regulation

For the 2015 RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, 25% of the final grade is determined by an editorial I have to write with 3 other students. Scratch that; one of them is no longer enrolled. Good for me! The less, the merrier! The remaining two students in group C with the same subject—metabolic regulation—are: Jesse E. Kuindersma and Vera E. Otten. Based on the editorial, we also have to prepare a presentation. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 17:03 | 3 comments

Programming is talking to the future

One day, some day long ago, I said to Jeroen Dekker, a photographer friend of mine, who was still learning to program at the time: “Programming is talking to the future.” He thought it was a good quote. Coming across it again now, so do I. It's good because it's true, which everybody who has ever debugged some old code—be it their own or someone else's—can attest to. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 16, 2015, at 21:03 | Comments closed

Installed MathJax-LaTeX WordPress plugin for blog.bigsmoke.us

Soon, I wish to document some statistical issues I've been running into lately due to the lack of understanding maintained by my recipe-level statistics training. Also, I'd like to document some of the things I did learn over the years, and, hopefully, the things I find out while working myself out of the modelling mountain that I currently find so difficult to mount. For this I will need to use some mathematical language, which is why I just installed the MathJaX-LaTeX WordPress plugin. MathJax-LaTeX uses the MathJax JavaScript library to support LaTeX and MathML math equations in WordPress without requiring the browser to have MathML support. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 16, 2015, at 16:03 | 1 comment

The insecurity of security questions

Another article link from my dusted-over ~jot directory: The Insecurity of Security Questions: Why I met my wife in CWmKryWzuxCSAnMDuIg. [So dusted-over is my ~/jot directory that Tom Moertel, the article's author, has changed he link schema of his blog without providing redirects. (The slashes in the date turned to dashed.) Cool URLs don't change, Tom, not according to the Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 14, 2015, at 17:03 | 2 comments

Dubai as an example for us all

Some Oct 2 2012 wisdom from SlashDot user fuzzyfuzzyfungus: “Dubai is an example of the glorious harmony between (middle) east and west! A city that wraps the middle east's robust traditions of rule of law and enlightenment liberalism and the west's values of sober financial honesty in the civic-planning expertise of Vegas developers on PCP... Truly, an example for us all.” Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 14, 2015, at 16:03 | Comments closed

Learning to ‘hack’ with Security Override

In August 2011, probably while procrastinating learning for my university admission exams, with one mouldy foot still in my IT-past, I signed up for Security Override, an online game designed to turn network security n00bs such as myself into novices. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 4 years ago, on March 14, 2015, at 16:03 | 1 comment