Summarizing from their official page, iGEM is about:

Using standard biological parts to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.

I’ve been tracking them since before joining KTH’s Computational Biology Masters degree. Having a quick look at past editions is both surprising and enlightening to see what they archieve year after year.

Perhaps the most rewarding sensation is being able to incrementally be aware of what they are talking about on their projects as I progress on my studies. Indeed, before joining the Masters I could barely understand the general idea, and got absolutely lost in the biological details. Now I can follow it after stepping on some stones that the master provided me.

Last year, together with Hassan, we based our final Biomodelling presentation on one project that matched the models we were studying on the course: Reaction diffusion systems.

Just a few weeks ago, while learning again how to stand up on a snowboard table on Romme, I had the great opportunity to talk with one of last year’s Uppsala Team advisor, Daniel, who not only enjoyed the experience, but together with his team, managed to contribute back some biobrick.

Today I would even like to try (dare?) and join one of those groups, just for the fun of learning how this amazing world actually works and to struggle with a real world problem.

And you ? What are you doing this summer ?

I regularly use my many years old mountain bike to go everywhere in Barcelona. A bike is an extremely cheap, fun and addictive vehicle. At least one friend followed my advice and his bike is nowadays his preferred choice when he has to go somewhere in the city… so give it a try if you can, I’m pretty sure that you’ll not get disappointed

After this short (not devilish) advertisement, there’s a curious repairing procedure I wanted to comment on this post: spoke wrenching. I like to ride my bicycle, but I must admit that I’m rather ignorant when it comes to fixing it, and here is precisely where your bike starts to get more expensive if you don’t stick to basic maintenance practices.

Just a couple of days ago I noticed that my rear wheel was not aligned at all: the wheel was touching one of the brake pads once on every cicle (woobling) and was getting worse as I kept biking :-/ The bike technician told me that my rear wheel spokes were not tight enough and that was causing all the wheel structure to bend.

After wrenching all of them, he managed to correct the woobling, but he explained that the hopping could not be fixed without completely removing all the spokes, readdressing the wheel itself and mounting all the spokes back again… which would translate in a “not-good-for-my-budget” amount of money and it wasn’t a critical repair anyway. So afterwards I bought a 6€ spoke whench tool and did the same procedure the bike tech guy did, this time with my front wheel. It was not easy, but eventually got it right and in addition I learnt a new and useful thing which could be also useful (and cost-saving) to you someday… isn’t blogging and biking cool ?

First of all: What is rattan ?

Rattan, called “mimbre” in spanish, is a commonly used material to construct hampers and furniture.

Wasn’t this blog about tech ?

Yep, that’s it’s main theme and I’m not a furniture expert, so why not add a computer to the mix ? Here you are:

All the components are holding by transparent nylon fishing wire. That way the visual impact of the hack is minimum It was not easy to fit all the stuff in such a limited space. For instance, the PSU had to be unmounted outside the furniture, put the parts inside, and mounted again like a ship in a bottle .

The hardware specs are quite minimum: PII 233 with 256 MB RAM, 10GB HDD, a couple of wireless network adapters (one PCI Atheros-based wifi card and the other one is a Senao 200mW PCMCIA card on a PLX PCI adapter). Finally there is also an ethernet card connected to an ATA which is in turn connected to a cheap DECT phone. Now I’m using this computer as a free hotspot+PBX, and it’s working quite good ATM

Everything started with the following question:

Hi dude, tomorrow I’m going to Helsinki and I don’t remember this laptop’s password, can you help me ?

A few searches looking for the typical master or universal passwords didn’t help much (nope, “admin” does not work as a backdoor bios password as most sites say, really). The owner was really fed up with HP support and it was quite late at night, so calling nor sending emails were going to help either.

Searching a bit deeper on forums, people were complaining about the same problem without solution: “Cannot reset omnibook xe3 bios password”, and the well known common thrick to erase the bios password was futile (removing the CMOS battery for a while to erase the password and settings). According to some posts, the password was actually stored on a 24C16 EEPROM close to the BIOS chip… So there we go

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Fa un temps, parlant amb jmmv comentavem lo que arriba a molestar el soroll que fa un ordinador de sobretaula quan hi estás una bona estona treballant (se’t clava al cap el soroll agut i continu dels ventiladors). Avui en dia existeixen moltes solucions a aquest problema, ja sigui refrigeriació líquida, kits per amb espumes i taps de goma per evitar vibracions, ventiladors amb més cabal, etc… Pero la majoria sinó tots, són força cars :-/

Aquesta és una solució que funciona sorprenentment bé i no requereix gastar-se pràcticament €’s (lo que val un ventilador de 12V en qualsevol tenda d’informàtica/electrònica). La idea és instal·lar dins la font un ventilador addicional per tal d’aconseguir més cabal d’aire calent evacuat amb menys velocitat aconseguint doncs, menys soroll.

Com molts sabreu, les PSU‘s (fonts d’alimentació) proveeixen principalment dos voltatges diferents: 5V i 12V. Si desmuntem una font d’alimentació, veurem que el ventilador que incorpora funciona a 12V. El soroll que fa es amb aquest voltatge es nota força. Si posem el ventilador a 5V, pot passar que no funcioni o que vagi massa lent… millor no experimentar cap de les dues opcions ja que l’experiment podria acabar amb incendi. La solució passa per connectar el ventilador addicional que li posarem i el que ve de série a la PSU als terminals de 12V i 5V (diferència de potencial=7V).

És necessari serrar la xapa que protegeix la PSU per poder-hi col·locar el ventilador. Tal com podeu apreciar a la foto, la meva solució no és molt maca però sí funcional: ara, després d’unes hores d’ordinador ja no acabo amb el cap com un bombo pel soroll

Nota: El mod fa prop d’un any que està funcionant i no m’ha donat cap problema. A més la modificació té la ventatge afegida que augmenta la vida dels ventiladors al anar a menys rpm’s (a qui no li ha roncat mai algun ventilador en mal estat ?).