Feb 28
![Pseudocolochirus violaceus [CC-BY-2.0 Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Pseudocolochirus_violaceus-300x224.jpg)
If sea cumbers are an example of intelligent design, then God – sorry, an unspecified supernatural intelligence that somehow doesn’t infringe on the First Amendment – needs to lay off the acid. Echinoderms are what you get when you give evolution the number 5 and half a billion years to piss around. You’ve simply got to love any animal …
Feb 20
Mr Wall’s Olde Fashioned Objeckts Caveat lector. Despite some cosmetic surgery, this post, like the previous one on writing modules, may show its age. It was originally written when Perl 5 wasn’t even 10 years old, and things have moved on substantially since then (and no, I don’t mean Perl 6). However, there’s a lot of …
Feb 20
![Fulica atra nest [CC-BY-2.0 Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Fulica_atra_nest-300x199.jpg)
Another quick one this week. Life finds a way… The neighbourhood coots build these landfill nests annually, and I’m never quite sure whether to be impressed or appalled.
Feb 20
Modularisation is a virtue The previous post showed you how to install and use other people’s modules; this post will address how to write your own. At some point, you will probably find yourself copying-and-pasting code from one script to another. When you find yourself doing that, you should consider what would happen if it …
Feb 14
![Gnetum gnemon [CC-BY-.2.0 Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Gnetum_gnemon-199x300.jpg)
Three for the price of one this week. Most seed-bearing plants fall into one of two main groups: the flowering plants (grasses and magnolias and butterworts and so on), or the conifers (pines and yews and monkey-puzzles and so on). However, there are three smaller groups of seed-bearing plants that don’t fit into this neat …
Feb 12
Anything is better than an recipe that uses volume measurements for highly compressible powders. I’m looking at you America, and your ridiculous ‘cup’ nonsense. Materials 0.110 kg powdered wheat endosperm (without added carbonates or tartrates) 4.28 mmol NaCl 2 unfertilised jungle-fowl eggs (between 63 and 73 g in mass) 275 mL of 75% (v/v) aqueous diluent …
Feb 09
![pGLO contamination [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/pGLO_contamination_fun-300x224.jpg)
Yesterday’s first-year biology practical involved forcing the laboratory work-horse bacterium Escherichia coli to take up a circular piece of DNA called pGLO. pGLO contains a few genes, but the most interesting of these DNA sequences encodes a protein from a jellyfish. This protein fluoresces green under UV light, and goes by the thoroughly unimaginative name of green fluorescent …
Feb 07
![Drosophyllum lusitanicum [CC-BY-2.0 Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Drosophyllum_lusitanicum-199x300.jpg)
Busy teaching this week, so it’ll have to be a quick one… I particularly like this plant because of a very specific and unusual thing about its leaves. The more observant of you may spot what it is without having to resort to Wikipedia…
![Dalek chromatic t-shirt [by J. William Grantham]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/daleks-300x251.jpg)