Samb Business Intelligence Blog: Blog

Randy Pausch dies, and the world loses a true hero...

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:45:51 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Randy Pausch passed away today - he was an amazing VR (Virtual Reality) pioneer and researcher and this video has some amazing lessons in life.

Amazing Molecular Biology Animation Video

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:53:47 GMT

Gartner's Predictions and Mine

Sat, 31 May 2008 16:44:19 GMT

The good folks over at the Gartner Group have revealed the top 10 technologies that they believe will change the world over the next four years:

Multicore and hybrid processors
Virtualization and fabric computing
Social networks and social software
Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
Web mashups
User Interface
Ubiquitous computing
Contextual computing
Augmented reality
Semantics

Most of these, in my opinion, are obvious - in fact, many are here. One of the things that Gartner commented on deeply when revealing this list was that items 1-4 will usher in an era of no need for IT shops. I find this fascinating since IT shops have basically funded Gartner's ridiculous advice over the past two decades. "Biting the hand that feeds you" is the best way to describe this.

Software and Hardware are not getting more simplified and cloud computing does not remove the need of local support and programming talent. If Gartner ever worked a day in their life in an IT shop they would understand this.

So, here's my prediction:

1. Gartner, Forrester, and all other IT Advice Houses lose relevance and disappear over the next 5 years.

*** This is my opinion and not the opinion of my employer ***

Metabolic Pathway Diagrams as a measure for complexity in Life Science

Fri, 30 May 2008 17:01:50 GMT

Prediction of metabolic networks using Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry data (PDF, 700kB)

Every once in a while I get questions from people about how complicated Life Science is...*very* would be a good answer...if not overly simplistic.

For me, a good reminder is to scan the current representations of Metabolic Pathways which typically show fairly elementary processes.
Given the constraints on price, the stress on patents and the decreasing pool of human resources that can be brought to bear on this problem, I think technology will be front and center on this endeavor.

How much are you paying for Gas?

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:39:30 GMT

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

The Multi-Touch Wall Killer App - Missile Command!

Tue, 20 May 2008 19:20:13 GMT

So, multitouch has some interesting applications, but all pale in comparison to playing a two-player version of Missile Command. The clone was installed by Steve Mason at the Obscura Digital production studios' massive 8'X4' multitouch wall—and as you can see in the video after the break, It looks like a good time, not to mention a decent workout.

PhotoSynth on CSI:NY

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:54:41 GMT

Big Dog from Boston Dynamics

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:03:47 GMT

http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog

OK, this has nothing to do with visualization or Life Science, but I know great technology when I see it.

This is an amazing movie - check out the icy surface test at the middle of the movie.

Injecting Bitmaps streams into Images in WPF from Web Service Calls

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:14:32 GMT

Whew, that's a big title. Ran into a great contact at the Atlantic City HLS DevCon, who asked me to post this code.

OK, so, that little image of the chemical structure on the bottom comes at me as a stream from a web service call to Chemspider.

Here's the call, and the creation of the bitmap image...

try
            {
                com.chemspider.www.TradeSearch.Search search = new com.chemspider.www.TradeSearch.Search();
                int[] ids = search.SimpleSearch2IdList(ChemSpiderSearchText.Text);
                Random r = new Random();
                double ri;
                int r1;

                if (ids != null && ids.Length > 0)
                {
                    foreach (int id in ids)
                    {
                        Canvas search_result = new Canvas();

search_result.Width = 400;
search_result.Height = 500;

                        ri = r.NextDouble() * 30;
                        r1 = (int)ri;
                        r1 = r1 + 220;
                        search_result.Background = new SolidColorBrush(System.Windows.Media.Color.FromArgb(255, (byte)r1, (byte)r1, (byte)r1));
                        search_result.Tag = "NR";
                        PinBoard.Children.Add(search_result);

object[] details = search.GetRecordDetails(id.ToString());

                        Label title = new Label();
                        title.Content = id.ToString();
                        search_result.Children.Add(title);

                        Label urllink = new Label();
                        Canvas.SetTop(urllink, 30);
                        urllink.Content = String.Format("http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.{0}.html", id);
                        search_result.Children.Add(urllink);

                        TextBox CKIKey = new TextBox();
                        Canvas.SetTop(CKIKey, 50);
                        CKIKey.VerticalScrollBarVisibility = ScrollBarVisibility.Visible;
                        CKIKey.Width = 380;
                        CKIKey.Height = 90;
                        CKIKey.Text = details[1].ToString();
                        search_result.Children.Add(CKIKey);

                        TextBox CHI = new TextBox();
                        CHI.MaxLines = 5;
                        Canvas.SetTop(CHI, 100);
                        CHI.VerticalScrollBarVisibility = ScrollBarVisibility.Visible;
                        CHI.Width = 380;
                        CHI.Height = 90;
                        CHI.Text = details[2].ToString();
                        search_result.Children.Add(CHI);

                        TextBox smiles = new TextBox();
                        smiles.MaxLines = 5;
                        smiles.VerticalScrollBarVisibility = ScrollBarVisibility.Visible;
                        smiles.Width = 380;
                        smiles.Height = 90;
                        Canvas.SetTop(smiles, 200);
                        smiles.Text = details[3].ToString();
                        search_result.Children.Add(smiles);

                        // Get the image of the structure...
                        //com.chemspider.www.TradeSearch.GetRecordImageCompletedEventArgs img = new com.chemspider.www.TradeSearch.GetRecordImageCompletedEventArgs);
                        byte[] bigimg = search.GetRecordImage(id.ToString());
                        System.Windows.Controls.Image myImage = new System.Windows.Controls.Image();

BitmapImage bitImg = new BitmapImage();

bitImg.BeginInit();

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(bigimg);

bitImg.StreamSource = ms;

bitImg.EndInit();

myImage.Source = bitImg;
bitImg = null;

                        myImage.Width = 150;
                        myImage.Height = 150;
                        Canvas.SetLeft(myImage, 10);
                        Canvas.SetTop(myImage, 300);
                        search_result.Children.Add(myImage);

// Position the result in an overall canvas by posx, posy (posx is incremented to give your results a staggered look)

// I animated mine, which is why I peeled that out here...

posx = posx + 45;

                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    MessageBox.Show("No Results Found.");
                }
            }
            catch
            {
            }

HLS DevCon in Atlantic City, NJ - Gene Expression Map Demo

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:43:37 GMT

I'm just about to do my presentation on WPF and Visualization in Life Sciences and wanted to post this up to my blog.

You can find my slides here (on SkyDrive).

At the end of the presentation, I built a Gene Expression map using WPF. Here are the steps to do it yourself, if you are so inclined.

First, using Visual Studio 2008, start a new Windows program and create a new WPF Application.

Here's the XAML...

In the code-behind (XAML.cs)...

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

namespace GeneExpression
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for Window1.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class Window1 : Window
    {
        public Window1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            Draw_Map();
        }

        private void Sparkle(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            double newposx, newposy;
            ((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)).Width = 12;
            ((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)).Height = 4;
            newposx = Canvas.GetLeft(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender))) - 1;
            newposy = Canvas.GetTop(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender))) - 1;
            Canvas.SetLeft(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)),newposx);
            Canvas.SetTop(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)),newposy);
        }

        private void NoSparkle(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            double newposx, newposy;
            ((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)).Width = 10;
            ((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)).Height = 2;
            newposx = Canvas.GetLeft(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender))) + 1;
            newposy = Canvas.GetTop(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender))) + 1;
            Canvas.SetLeft(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)),newposx);
            Canvas.SetTop(((System.Windows.FrameworkElement)(sender)),newposy);
        }

        private void slider_ValueChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                double ffactor;
                ffactor = ((System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.RangeBase)(sender)).Value;
                ScaleTransform myscale;
                myscale = new ScaleTransform(ffactor, ffactor);
                Backgrounder.RenderTransform = myscale;

            }
            catch (Exception)
            { }
        }
        private void Draw_Map()
        {
            double xx, yy;
            double markval;
            int markcolor;
            Random r1 = new Random();
            for (yy = 0; yy < 300; yy++)
            {
                for (xx = 0; xx < 300; xx++)
                {
                    Rectangle Gene = new Rectangle();
                    Gene.MouseEnter += new MouseEventHandler(Sparkle);
                    Gene.MouseLeave += new MouseEventHandler(NoSparkle);
                    Gene.Width = 10;
                    Gene.Height = 2;
                    Canvas.SetLeft(Gene, xx * 11);
                    Canvas.SetTop(Gene, yy * 3);
                    Backgrounder.Children.Add(Gene);
                    Gene.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
                    markval = r1.NextDouble() * 255;
                    markcolor = (int)markval;
                    Gene.ToolTip = markcolor.ToString();
                    if (markcolor < 125)
                    {
                        markcolor = markcolor * 2;
                        Gene.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(255,(byte)markcolor,0,0));
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Gene.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(255, 0,(byte)markcolor, 0));
                    }
                }
            }

}
}

}

I met a lot of great folks at DevCon(my first Health Care Devcon) - and I can't wait to see you this coming year.

Thanks for coming!

Home Foreclosure Heat Map

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:38:49 GMT

http://hotpads.com/pages/features/foreclosures.htm

This is just plain scary!

HotPads Foreclosure Heat Maps portray the markets hit hardest by the recent housing crisis and the increased foreclosure rates. These foreclosure heat maps visually illustrate the foreclosures per capita and display color-coded foreclosure rates by county and state.

Intelligence for the Masses...

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:55:45 GMT

Sometimes, no matter how much time you spend on visualization, the raw data should speak for itself.

Hawaii, the Highest Mountain on Earth?

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:55:29 GMT

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/popup/hawaii.htm

I thought this was an interesting visualization. Even though a cardinal rule of baselines is broken here, they manage to pull off using the curvature of the Earth as a baseline.

Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level, but it’s not the world’s tallest mountain. That honor goes to the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea. When measured from its base on the Pacific Ocean floor, it is about 1,000 meters taller than Mount Everest. Mauna Kea is part of a 5,600-kilometer-long string of volcanoes stretching westward from the main Hawaiian island.

Credit: Nils Sparwasser, Thorsten Andresen, Stephan Reiniger; Robert Meisner, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Rendering Live Web Pages in WPF

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:24:07 GMT

I got a lot of help from my friend Michael Peters, of Oculus, so pay his blog a visit for me.

In working on WPF, there are a number of reasons why someone might want to render a "live" web page on a canvas. By "live", I don't mean a dumb thumbnail - although that can have value too - I mean a fully navigable Web page that you can click and navigate.

Here's how to do it. Download the WPFInterop codeplex entry. Create a Canvas (mine is called Pinboard) and add this code to create a dynamic button:

Canvas backgrounder = new Canvas();

backgrounder.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue);
backgrounder.Width = 860;
backgrounder.Height = 1110;

Button pageresult = new Button();
pageresult.Width = 850;
pageresult.Height = 1100;
Canvas.SetLeft(pageresult, 5);
Canvas.SetTop(pageresult, 5);
Uri wpURL = new Uri(sourceResult.Url);
pageresult.Content = openwebFile(wpURL);
pageresult.ToolTip = "Title: " + sourceResult.Title + "\nDescription: " + sourceResult.Description + "\nSummary: " + sourceResult.Summary + "\n\nURL: " + sourceResult.Url;

PinBoard.Children.Add(backgrounder);

Canvas.SetLeft(backgrounder, posx);
Canvas.SetTop(backgrounder, posy);
backgrounder.Children.Add(pageresult);

The Function, openwebFile returns a grid with the web page addressable by the URL (wpURL).

private Grid openwebFile(Uri url)

{

Grid myGrid = new Grid();

System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser sampleWB = new System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser();

sampleWB.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(850, 1100);

sampleWB.Url = url;

WPFInterop.InteropInfoMesa2.Win32HostRenderer sampleRender = new WPFInterop.InteropInfoMesa2.Win32HostRenderer();

sampleRender.ContentControl = sampleWB;

myGrid.Children.Add(sampleRender);

return myGrid;

}

Here's the net effect of many web pages from a search coming back from Microsoft Live Web Service:

It doesn't work perfectly (yet), so keep an eye out for new releases.

Ray Tracing Molecules using the IBM BlueGene SuperComputer

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:45:57 GMT

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0801/0801.1500v1.pdf

Michael McGuigan of the Brookhaven National Laboratory is using a BlueGene Supercomputer to perform Ray Tracing in real time against exceptionally complex objects. Instead of lighting each polygon and calculating impinging light on its surface, Ray Tracing, on the other hand, scans an imaginary particle of light through each pixel, bouncing and refracting in the way real light performs. This enables images of amazing realism. Intel is also talking more and more about this.

Image of the 1e79 Atp phosphorylase molecule rendered with ambient
occlusion lighting on a Blue Gene/L with the parallel tachyon raytracer.

Lamborghini Reventon Dashboard

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:19:45 GMT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Revent%C3%B3n

$1,000,000.00 buys you a new look for your car's dashboard -
or, you can print this out and glue it onto your Pinto.

Zygote Dataset Gallery

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:30:22 GMT

I posted a few days ago about the Zygote/3D Science Dataset that arrived the other day. The quality of their data is quite amazing.
Here's a small sample of their offering rendered in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Muscular System Skull Female Organs Lymphatic System Circulatory System Male Skeleton

1969 Moon Landing Transcript

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:38:40 GMT

I thought this was a good example of context (overview) and detail with text.

http://www.fibredesign.co.uk/index.php?/case_study/motorola_75th_anniversary_poster/

3D Annotations of *.3DS models using the ScreenSpaceLines3D Class

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:50:56 GMT

As people who follow this blog know, I've been working on an overall idea that marries 3D models and 2D images, documents, data visualizations, etc. into one big thing. A major part of this is is factoring things like tagging and annotation across the *overall* capability, instead of just doing it in all the individual tools (like it's done now)...
Here's an example of using a ScreenSpaceLine3d class instance with the 3dsreader...next up: tying the right side of the annotation to a point that can anchor linkages to any kind of element.

ScreenSpaceLines3D mline = new ScreenSpaceLines3D();
mline.Color = Colors.Black;
mline.Thickness = 1.5;
Point3D onjectCenter;
onjectCenter = _mainReader3ds.Transformer.GetObjectCenter(_mainModel3DGroup);
Point3D start = new Point3D(onjectCenter.X, onjectCenter.Y, onjectCenter.Z);
Point3D ender = new Point3D(100,100,40);
mline.Points.Add(start);
mline.Points.Add(ender);
Viewport1.Children.Add(mline);

Rendering 3D objects (3ds) with WPF

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:05:45 GMT

Here are some images I built today using the great library available from WPF Graphics. It renders 3ds files in WPF 3D viewports. The source data is from www.zygote.com, specifically, the Male/Female Premier Anatomy Collection, which we recently purchased. The quality of the datasets and the texture maps really speak for themselves.

Microsoft World-wide Telescope

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:59:31 GMT

fastcompany.tv/video/exclusive-first-look-worldwide-telescope

My Boss is blogging! Welcome to the conversation, Mike!

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:31:59 GMT

http://naimoli.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!AD540FB65800D945!165.entry

Fixations on Color for Visualization

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:56:44 GMT

Periodically on this blog I will comment about how bad the default colors are in most BI/Visualization Tools. The easiest target is, of course, Excel, but Reporting Services and other tools have the same gaudy, default color schemes: fire engine red, grass green, mustard yellow, royal blue, etc.

Is color important? Can it actually help readability of data?

The answer is yes, but this can be a bit subjective. I include two images here from my friend, Michael Peters, a visualization expert working at Oculus in Toronto.

These are visualizations of financial data across something like 610 columns and hundreds of rows. The data undulates, fluctuates and bends at various points across time in a rather - OK, I'll go ahead and say it- it's beautiful - it's pleasing to the eye. Did this happen by accident? Nope - it's very deliberate and I'm guessing here that getting those colors to look like that - beautiful to the eye - probably took more time to achieve than the rest of the visual combined.

Next time you build a visual, take some time and work on the colors, don't just take the defaults - those extra minutes can make a big difference.

Visit Oculus.

Metabolic Pathway Diagrams with WPF

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:29:14 GMT

Recently, one of my colleagues (Gabor Fari) sent me a bit of a challenge. Displaying Metabolic Pathways in a Resolution Independent manner. Naturally, I immediately thought of WPF, but Silverlight would also be a good choice for this particular visualization.

Gabor sent me this link: http://www.g-language.org/GenomeProjector/# which is basically the Google map engine applied to massive scanned images. You could show anything with this technology that is image based: architectural drawings, floor plans, even artwork.

Here's what the link generates:

I really like the bookmark concept (which is really just masking x,y coordinates with an English description). There's also a zoomed map on the right (cut-off on this view - sorry about that) that provides classic Overview & Detail based awareness.

So, I went to the source of the scanned data (yes, someone really drew this map - regardless of whether it was a tool specifically designed for Metabolic mapping, or something like Visio, you have to give the author credit - I'm sure they are wearing bi-focal's now).

Here's the source: http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl

Each panel is a separate .png image that can be tiled out. So I downloaded each tile (each one has a tile coordinate based scheme - like tileA10.png - like a Battleship game layout).

Then I created a WPF canvas and tiled them across - generating images dynamically and mapping them across x and y. Each image is 720 by 600 pixels, so my images are 72 x 60 - more on this in a second.

Here's the first show - the overall canvas is blue and you can just make out the tiling in between the tiles.

Now, to zoom in on the Canvas...

and again,

and since we are here, let's ink on the tiles using an InkCanvas overlay...

I'm particularly happy with the readability of each tile - amazing work by the WPF guys in sampling and scaling these things.

This particular challenge only took about 30 minutes to build, but more to the point, adding things like annotation, connecting it to literature, tagging, breaking out each tile to work with them independently--you get it all for free.

I'm still working on it, but wanted to post this out...

Movie Ebb & Flow: visualizing popularity and revenue of movies over time.

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:44:29 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html#

TED Talk: Eva Vertes: My dream about the future of medicine

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:00:41 GMT

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/12

What an amazing concept...

If you watch this clock long enough you start to feel your own life slipping away...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:46:03 GMT

http://www.chippynews.com/worldclock.htm

Info Mesa adds Molecular Modeling and Visualization

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:17:41 GMT

The newest tool addition to InfoMesa is the molecular model. It sources its 3-D coordinates from PDB files and allows ball-and-stick, backbone and cartoon visualizations. The molecules can also be color-coded by Atom, Amino-Acid, or Chain. The basics for the tool came from the open-source molecular viewer from Interknowlogy (http://gdcportal.interknowlogy.com/lab/Pages/Network.aspx).

Here's an image with multiple molecules added, side-by-side with various other types of media.

With all the additions we have made to InfoMesa we will now start to build out the underlying database to persist all the positions and angles for these element types.

Visio to XAML Conversion

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:58:57 GMT

http://www.codeplex.com/VisioExportToXAML
http://blogs.msdn.com/saveenr/default.aspx

Found a really neat tool that describes taking Visio drawings to XAML. I have a real desire to put this on InfoMesa - we've had a number of scientists ask for integration with Word/Excel/Powerpoint. Adding Visio to this is a no brainer.

Capacitive Touch is Coming Soon

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:27:56 GMT

Link to Video

VLOG - Video Annotation feature for InfoMesa

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:12:12 GMT

I'm going to try something a little different here. One of my colleagues is going to build a component for InfoMesa and we will publish the results of the work across both of our blogs.

Allan Da Costa Pinto is a Developer Evangelist and he has a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/allandcp/. He's going to help me with a VLOG, or Video-Log control. Many of the scientists we have shown the InfoMesa to have requested this feature. While we do provide a text annotation tool that is similar to yellow sticky (but with spell check :) ), the VLOG is a fantastic addition.

So, overall the VLOG will look like this...

Author/Date timestamp automatically added for you
Video image of the recording (video and audio)
Some sort of feedback to show where audio occurs or is absent
A slider to seek position rapidly through the stream
Play and Pause at a minimum
Ability to change play speed to 2X or reset to 1X
Oh, yeah, and a record button, with a visualization of volume.

Here's the napkin sketch view...

Of critical importance is to be able to acquire and re-hydrate the buffers that contain the audio and video of the recording so that we can store it. Anyone can show a video or play audio - we need to create it, store it, retrieve it and navigate it. These two items (or one, if possible) will be stored in the InfoMesa database.

Here's where we are starting from ... this code lives on top of the Pinboard Canvas of the InfoMesa Whiteboard...

Creating and instance....

private void InsertVlog(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            videoAnnotation va = new videoAnnotation();
            va.newvlog("C:\\Users\\Public\\Videos\\Sample Videos\\bear.wmv", PinBoard );

}

...and here's the class...

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Input;

namespace InfoMesa2
{
    public partial class videoAnnotation
    {
        Slider timescale = new Slider();
        MediaElement mp = new MediaElement();

        public void newvlog(string vURL, Canvas parentpart)
        {
            Canvas backgrnd = new Canvas();
            backgrnd.Width = 220;
            backgrnd.Height = 200;
            backgrnd.Tag = "NR";
            backgrnd.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.DarkGray);
            Canvas.SetLeft(backgrnd, 100);
            Canvas.SetTop(backgrnd, 100);
            parentpart.Children.Add(backgrnd);

            Uri vidURL = new Uri(vURL);
            mp.MediaOpened += Element_MediaOpened;
            mp.Source = vidURL;
            mp.Tag = "NR";
            mp.Width = 175;
            mp.Height = 175;

            Canvas.SetLeft(mp, 20);
            Canvas.SetTop(mp, 5);
            backgrnd.Children.Add(mp);
            Canvas.SetZIndex(mp, 100);
           // mp.LoadedBehavior = MediaState.Manual;

            // Play
            Button cmdPlay = new Button();
            cmdPlay.Content = "Play";
            cmdPlay.MouseDown += OnMouseDownPlayMedia;
            Canvas.SetLeft(cmdPlay, 25);
            Canvas.SetTop(cmdPlay, 175);
            backgrnd.Children.Add(cmdPlay);

            // Stop
            Button cmdStop = new Button();
            cmdStop.Content = "Stop";
            cmdStop.MouseDown += OnMouseDownStopMedia;
            Canvas.SetLeft(cmdStop, 65);
            Canvas.SetTop(cmdStop, 175);
            backgrnd.Children.Add(cmdStop);

            // Record
            Button cmdRec = new Button();
            cmdRec.Content = "Record";
            cmdRec.MouseDown += OnMouseDownStopMedia;
            Canvas.SetLeft(cmdRec, 95);
            Canvas.SetTop(cmdRec, 175);
            backgrnd.Children.Add(cmdRec);

            timescale.Minimum = 0;
            timescale.Maximum = 100;
            timescale.Width = 170;
            timescale.ValueChanged += new RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler<double>(SeekToMediaPosition);
            Canvas.SetLeft(timescale, 20);
            Canvas.SetTop(timescale, 150);
            backgrnd.Children.Add(timescale);
        }

        private void SeekToMediaPosition(object sender, RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs<double> e)
        {
            int SliderValue = (int)timescale.Value;

            // Overloaded constructor takes the arguments days, hours, minutes, seconds, miniseconds.
            // Create a TimeSpan with miliseconds equal to the slider value.
            TimeSpan ts = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, SliderValue);
            mp.Position = ts;
        }

        private void Element_MediaOpened(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            timescale.Maximum = mp.NaturalDuration.TimeSpan.TotalMilliseconds;
        }

void OnMouseDownPlayMedia(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs args)
{

            // The Play method will begin the media if it is not currently active or
            // resume media if it is paused. This has no effect if the media is
            // already running.
            TimeSpan ts = new TimeSpan(0,0,0,0,0);

mp.Position = ts;
mp.Play();

// Initialize the MediaElement property values.
InitializePropertyValues();

}

void OnMouseDownStopMedia(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs args)
{

            // The Stop method stops and resets the media to be played from
            // the beginning.
            mp.Stop();

}

        void InitializePropertyValues()
        {
            // Set the media's starting Volume and SpeedRatio to the current value of the
            // their respective slider controls.
            mp.Volume = (double)10; // volumeSlider.Value;
            mp.SpeedRatio = (double)2; // speedRatioSlider.Value;
        }

}
}

Some advice and places to help you get going...

http://weblogs.asp.net/nleghari/articles/webcam.aspx

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=95238

http://blogs.msdn.com/markhsch/archive/2007/11/19/c-webcam-user-control-source.aspx

http://thewpfblog.com/?p=65

...and away we go... oops, I mean Allan - Go, Allan, Go!

There's a big difference between visualization and explanation

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:30:44 GMT

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

Steampunk - high tech meets "permanence"

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:30:54 GMT

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid1135486277

InfoMesa - adding support for Ideas, Hypothesis and Experiments with Judgment links

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:00:31 GMT

We have added some rudimentary support for grouping ideas, hypothesizes and experiments inside of InfoMesa, again blurring lines between project management and Electronic Lab Notebooks.

Here's an example of an Idea connected to two hypotheses and one experiment. Notice the judgment buttons that allow you to set value of hypos and experiments. Ideas currently don't have value - they just, well, exist (do you agree with that concept?)

Each object in InfoMesa can be linked, in this case, the linkages are from idea to hypo to experiment, but it can be to individual data points and web results as well.

Clicking on the midpoint indicator of the link allows you to cycle between "good", "bad" and "unknown" states. As always, these items are stored behind the scenes in a database and can be search by Sharepoint using the BDC (Business Data Catalog).

Tony Williams (chemspider) recently got to see some of this early work and added his comments.

Meeting Antony Williams at ChemSpider (www.chemspider.com)

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:34:08 GMT

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to personally meet with Tony Williams of ChemSpider fame for a few hours. He's one of those people that talks for 10 minutes and you think, 'I could learn a huge amount from this person'.

One of the huge impacts from that meeting on me was that the action of curetting scientific data published to the web is incredibly important. There is a huge amount of junk chemistry data on the web and people are starting research from these basic building blocks of corrupt data sets. If that building block is wrong, much of the research that extends from that point will be wrong.

With all the search engines indexing and scraping this stuff, are we making this issue worse?

Here are a few posting that I feel are profound...

http://www.chemspider.com/blog/a-need-to-improve-chemical-structure-handling-on-wikipedia.html

http://www.chemspider.com/blog/a-users-guide-to-the-process-of-curating-identifiers-on-chemspider.html

http://www.chemspider.com/blog/we-need-an-inchikey-resolver-and-we-need-it-now.html

http://www.chemspider.com/blog/will-the-correct-structure-of-taxol-please-stand-up-part-3.html

This should force us all to think about how we can insure integrity of the data, not just the publish, index, and search of the data.

InfoMesa and the ELN (Electronic Lab Notebook) Connection

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:25:09 GMT

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/07/write_it_down_write_it_down.php

Today I read an interesting post on ELNs at Rich Apodaca's site, Depth First. There are a few connections between what we are doing with InfoMesa and ELNs, especially as we have added support for Ideas, Hypothesizes and Experiments.

The blog is interesting to read, but the comments are even more telling - here are a few that I took away...

It's difficult to flip from one experiment to another, if you want to quickly compare conditions or check data, for example. Changing from one "page" to the next is glacially slow, and it's very hard to quickly jump back and forth between experiments without tearing your hair out in frustration. (As at many companies, our software is "networked" which means "slow", especially at busy times of the day.) The other issue is that our system is currently desktop only - no computers in the labs. Which means you make notes on scraps of paper and then transfer them when you're at your desk. That will change (with more $$$ for laptops), but it's still an issue if your lab space is limited - where do you put the laptop (and it's attendant cables and power cords) and how do you protect an expensive laptop from spills and contamination. It was much easier to keep a paper notebook at your bench, and stash it away in a drawer when it wasn't needed.
I just scan my TLC plates on a scanner, save it as a pdf and link it to my notebook page.
I know this question is terribly dull but while [you are] at recommending electronic note books, can anyone recommend any time sheet software. I just wanted to save myself the trouble of knocking up an excel spreadsheet ... anyone?
I do optical materials development at a US DoD lab, and everyone I've worked with here uses a paper notebook. Up until recently, my wife also worked as a chemist doing materials chemistry at a university-affiliated contract lab, and no one there used anything but paper, either.
I've never even seen an electronic lab notebook, and that fact makes me, at 33 years old, feel like a dinosaur. I've thought seriously about buing an ASUS eee or some other subnotebook PC and using conventional software (Open Office or the like) to keep my notes, but I'm not sure that such a system would offer me enough advantages to make it worth my time.
I'm curious about the hardware you used in both cases. A lab notebook needs to be tolerant of some very demanding conditions - solvent spills, chemical contamination on the keyboard, and dropping to name a few.
Then there's the issue of ergonomics - a laptop computer has a screen that might not be visible at certain angles and a keyboard that needs to be used often while standing or in some other awkward position.
Tablet PCs seem nice, but still pricey.
These are all things a paper notebook handle in stride. What about ELN hardware?
I'm in an academic genetics lab, it is all paper, and I have not seen nor heard of any other labs on campus using electronic notebooks. We do a lot of supplementary data repositories in Excel and other programs
I've been dreaming about a good ELN package for some time, but haven't been able to justify the expense, nor have I been able to get the slightest whiff of interest from my somewhat Luddite lab group(They think Zip disks(remember those?) are high-tech, and a good way to distribute large files.)
I'm leaning towards thinking that existing CMSes will branch into this area for small groups as soon as there's sufficient demand.
What I do is keep everything in Outlook Journal. This makes it easy to cut and paste into Office apps like Powerpoint and Excel, to share over the Exchange system, and to publish on the web. Not great, but adequate as is and approaching fairly good with a little VB programming.
Note that this is only me in the group doing it, but if your group uses Exchange, it should scale OK.
One of the big problems with electronic notebooks (a few years back) was that they were inadmissible as evidence in court because the date and content could be easily changed at any time. Therefore, it was really not a good record of WHEN a particular compound was made. For those of you using informal applications (MS Office and the like), you should be aware that paper notebooks (when witnessed properly) have MUCH more weight in a court case than an electronic file does.
Does anyone here use digital cameras to record color, etc. of reactions as they occur? I suppose it'd be much more use in reaction development than anything else.

Google and their Search Results by timeline experiment

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:20:29 GMT

http://www.google.com/views?q=space+exploration+view:timeline&esrch=RefinementBarTopViewTabs&sa=N&ct=timeline

Google is experimenting with a timeline approach to viewing search results that I find interesting.

Here are the results of space exploration.

I think for the next few years you will see all the search companies (Goog/MSFT/YHOO) all begin to leave the 10 link result simplified page and head toward more graphical/visualization-based results.

A Cool Desktop Silverlight Demo

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:21:20 GMT

http://galilee.microsoft.fr/TechDays2008/SL/techdays-2008-silverlight.aspx

I thought this demo was pretty neat - it certainly is more interesting than one video at a time.

Finding Exceptional Programming Talent

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:26:36 GMT

http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

I found this interesting post, and while I don't agree with every point, overall, it's a great profile...

Positive indicators:

Passionate about technology
Programs as a hobby
Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged
Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
Learns new technologies on his/her own
Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages
Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe to be “right”
Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
Started programming long before university/work
Has some hidden “icebergs”, large personal projects under the CV radar
Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)

Negative indicators:

Programming is a day job
Don’t really want to “talk shop”, even when encouraged to
Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
Happy to work with whatever technology you’ve picked, “all technologies are good”
Doesn’t seem too smart
Started programming at university
All programming experience is on the CV
Focused mainly on one or two technology stacks (e.g. everything to do with developing a java application), with no experience outside of it

New MS Surface Demo at CES

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:15:08 GMT

http://on10.net/blogs/nic/Microsoft-Surface--CES-2008/Default.aspx

New MS Surface Apps at CES 2008