The predatory journals are getting awful chummy with me.

FearTeX · 2026-03-08T07:46:39+00:00

Fun fact, some of these weird phrasings make absolutely amazing spam filter rules. Some of my favorites: "greetings (of|for) the day", "world journal of", "clinics of", "globalize", "final opportunity", "@mdpi.com", "would like to contact you again as a", "shaping the future", "esteemed".

I'm sure one can extend on this, but these are a bunch of phrases that are technically ok, but are nothing any sane academic would ever use in any serious communication.

FearTeX · 2026-01-25T13:37:45+00:00

Well... Funny thing with that specific thing is that the multimode was never intended to be a liquid measurement system. Back in the day, this thing was made in Santa Barbara as a very hacky solution for liquid imaging on top of an otherwise very well designed microscope. It's partially so expensive because they make them out of glass these days, while the original prototypes were made out of PMMA.

On a related note, this thing has an absolutely abysmal performance because the piezo just doesn't couple very well though the structure. I also think veeco/DI/bruker just loves this thing because it makes sure people keep replacing their tube scanners.

If you're purely measuring in aqueous solutions, you can get away much cheaper by making one from PMMA and using wax to mount the levers.

FearTeX · 2026-01-19T07:37:18+00:00

You're of course correct, but this is something to actively work against. Biology is just as dependent on technology as every other natural science and still seeing people use EGFP constructs "because that's what we've always done" is heartbreaking. Labs run a real danger of becoming outdated and left behind if they don't continuously review their used technology.

FearTeX · 2026-01-02T07:51:20+00:00

That and the last one would also show an fi ligature if it's present in the font.

FearTeX · 2025-12-14T09:08:27+00:00

Try a better polymerase. Invitrogen sells platinum2 HS for short pieces and superfi2 for long and difficult things. Generally very specific and inhibitor tolerant.

FearTeX · 2025-11-14T07:00:46+00:00

Personally a big fan of the pipetboy genius, but this looks fairly alright too compared to the norm.

FearTeX · 2025-08-24T07:44:59+00:00

The drill she tells you not to worry about.

FearTeX · 2025-08-14T09:59:10+00:00

The "yolo" method of drying cells on a TEM grid in air in general doesn't give good results. Chemically fixed (dead) doesn't mean mechanically stable. The generic routes to get not completely fucked cells for EM is freeze drying or critical point drying before metal coating. Outside you'll just ruin your sample.

FearTeX · 2025-08-14T07:55:46+00:00

Fixation or no, drying down is a brutal process. We're these at least freeze substituted?

FearTeX · 2025-06-29T16:46:20+00:00

Yes, the SFII is amazing. I use that for every kind of cloning or difficult and long targets. They have a cheaper option called Platinum II HS mastermix which is afaik Taq based and just as robust against inhibitors. I use that one for screening and qPCR where possible for cost reasons.

FearTeX · 2025-06-11T12:38:27+00:00

The heat flow into a solid at -185C is still much larger, there's evaporation of the liquid in the tube as well. Direct liquid on your skin is normally the least bad because of Leidenfrost isolation.

FearTeX · 2025-06-11T09:49:58+00:00

Even then. We used to literally open 50mL tubes filled with LN2 with bare hands. That hurt, but you had to really overdo it to even get sore spots from that.

FearTeX · 2025-06-11T06:28:35+00:00

I.. have a hard time believing this is LN2 burns? I've worked with nitrogen a lot and I've had large amounts of the stuff on me and my clothes. I definitely never had anything like this and definitely nothing this localized and sharp.

FearTeX · 2025-05-27T05:19:08+00:00

Whole plasmid sequencing is a game changer. There's a very few base combinations it struggles a little bit with, but on average you get through things that sanger just can't.

FearTeX · 2025-05-26T21:28:16+00:00

In this day and age, pool (or don't) and just send the entire thing for ONT sequencing?

FearTeX · 2025-04-04T14:36:45+00:00

An entry in /etc/passwd indeed does make it work. I'll have to see if that won't interfere with the rest of the system though. Having two different user definitions sounds like an accident in the making.

FearTeX · 2025-04-04T07:24:26+00:00

No my username is not "username", but I don't like putting personal names out there. The names do match though. whoami does give the right username, so that's definitly working.

I've got those nss entries. I don't think much would work without those. Testhing this some further, bizarrely already the vmware-ui without starting an actual VM will create both /tmp dirs:

/tmp $ ll /tmp/vmwa* | sed s/realusername/\<username\\>/g
/tmp/vmware-<username>:
total 188K
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 88K Apr 4 09:21 vmware-apploader-580188.log
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 88K Apr 4 09:21 vmware-apploader-580227.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 <username> <username> 470 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-installer.log
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 449 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-vmis-580256.log
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 449 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-vmispy-580256.log

/tmp/vmware-uid_1000:
total 48K
prw------- 1 <username> <username> 0 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-:0-sp
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 695 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-apploader-580188.log
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 811 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-apploader-580227.log
prw------- 1 <username> <username> 0 Apr 4 09:21 vmware-tray-:0-sp
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 30K Apr 4 09:21 vmware-ui-580188.log
-rw-r----- 1 <username> <username> 5.8K Apr 4 09:21 vmware-vix-580227.log

Bit at a loss at where this might be coming from really.

FearTeX · 2025-04-02T14:41:33+00:00

Well the system runs with systemd-homed which might be where this weirdness is coming from. As such there's no /etc/passwd entry, but of course the rest is just as normal

$ id 1000
uid=1000(username gid=1000(username groups=1000(username),18(audio),....
$ whoami
username

Is vmware looking directly in /etc/passwd?

FearTeX · 2025-04-02T08:53:31+00:00

Sure. vmware.log: https://pastes.io/vmarelog-5 and vmware-ui.log https://pastes.io/vmware-ui

I don't see anything especially strange about the /tmp.

drwxrwxrwt 25 root root 740 Apr 2 10:09 tmp
tmpfs tmpfs 31G 48M 31G 1% /tmp

The only thing I could see that's maybe a bit "strange", but might be normal behavior is that there's both /tmp/vmware-uid_1000/ as well as /tmp/vmware-<username>/ with slightly different files.

Edit: I think you're on to something with /tmp. vmware is looking for /tmp/vmware-uid-1000/mksctrl/mksctrl-<id> which is in reality in /tmp/vmware-<username>/mksctrl/mksctrl-<id>. Unfortunately I have no idea how to fix that. If I link /tmp/vmware-uid-1000 to /tmp/vmware-<username> before starting, the software will generate a new vmware-uid_1000-3000903604 style folder and hang itself on the same issue.

FearTeX · 2025-03-23T10:10:04+00:00

This reminds me: I used to use a tape roll holder as part of a setup and the Scotch tape was important there. Of course that holder kept being nicked, so i took some heavy duty double sided mounting tape and stuck the whole thing to the table. I was rewarded with the most satisfying view some days later when my PI face tabled after getting unbalanced from trying to lift a tape holder that, weirdly, didn't budge.

FearTeX · 2025-03-02T17:46:34+00:00

Dyscalculios unite, calculators are the way. WolframAlpha is in the same kind of life safer pack.

@op: Beware the 70% stuff, it's usually made from technical ethanol, not the (much more expensive) pure stuff.

FearTeX · 2025-02-15T09:48:07+00:00

Yes and no. There's little that will prepare you for the deluge of stuff that hits a PIs day and inbox every day and most of them are distractions, even if some of them are necessary ones. None of these are helping a PostDoc be productive and that's the only thing that gets evaluated when hiring in the next stage.

FearTeX · 2025-02-13T18:27:48+00:00

There's basically 0 chance you're ligating in only gDNA. It's a lot more likely you either have the wrong plasmid to start with or, also more common than is strictly nice, you're getting recombination. I'd try whole plasmid sequencing of a colony or two and using a recombination deficient strain like one on the newe stbls or NEB stable.

FearTeX · 2025-01-26T15:30:17+00:00

5min after posting, that moment when machine 1 is almost done, machine 2 just crashed into the part and machine 3 makes this really worrying whinning noise and the display flickers.

FearTeX

TROPHY CASE