Gradient Descent into Existential Dread. I’ve been working with chatbots since pre-pandemic. I downloaded GPT-2 the day it became available in November 2019. Like many hackers, I wrapped it in a REPL,…

I was pretty ill in February 2020. I had an upper respiratory infection that turned into what felt like the worst pneumonia of my life. I was in my mid-40s and fairly healthy, but this thing, whatever…

Farewell, Unit 16. Like many projects, Unit 16 was a casualty of the pandemic. We had a great run (started Unit 15 in 2009, continued in a new location in 2018, up to sixteen active members at our pea…

After more than five years in commercial development, Spiral Genetics has released version 7 of our BioGraph genomic analysis platform. It’s now free for academic use and the full source is up on GitH…

Know thyself. The Human Genome Project formally began in 1990 and was declared complete in April 2003. After thirteen years and billions of dollars, researchers produced a sequence of more than 3 bill…

I’ve seen many fascinating things under the scanning electron microscope. Pollen, various crystals, diatoms, and even viral particles. But nothing could have prepared me for the Fall of 2019, when I d…

…from your friendly neighborhood bug (~500x).

Aligning Milly’s electron beam is tricky business. It’s a process involving hours (or even days!) of pain and uncertainty that might, just possibly, result in a better microscope imaging experience. T…

‘cause a SEM party got diatoms.

Enjoy some random pollen samples.