Cell Position Data

One thing that I'll need before too much longer is position information for the cells in the C. elegans embryo. I did some literature searches, and came up with a couple of papers.

The first, "The embryonic cell lineage of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans" by Sulston, et al, seems to be the seminal paper on cell lineage, and contains a ton of information on lineage as well as cell position in the embryo.

The second, "Assessing normal embryogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans using a 4D microscope: variability of development and regional specification" by Schnabel, et al, also contains a fair amount of cell position information. The other thing that makes this paper interesting is that it shows the variability of events during embryogenesis. This variability data will be useful far in the future to help establish a baseline against which various models can be validated.

Last but not least, I found a couple of software packages that provide views of the developing embryo. One, Angler, contains a data file in the unix version that gives the position of each cell in 4D space (3D position plus time of birth).

OpenGL Here I Come

Ok, it has been way too long since I've posted. Chalk it up to exams, the holiday, and a World of Warcraft binge (I got my mage up to level 70 - woohoo!).

Anyway, I've pretty much given up on XNA in favor of OpenGL for my project. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, I've used OpenGL in the past, so the learning curve won't be quite as steep.

Second, I'm not creating a game, so XNA doesn't fit quite right. OpenGL runs on my laptop (XNA doesn't - at least, not the examples I've tested). I'm not creating models and importing them into the app, which seems to be what XNA is tailored to do.

Third, I can run OpenGL inside a windows form, with menus and whatnot. Very handy for what I want. I found an open source control to make it trivial.

I'm not bashing XNA. If I were writing game, I'd use it in a heartbeat. But I'm not writing a game, which at least in my opinion, makes OpenGL a better choice.

Right now, I'm going through some OpenGL examples, trying to get the transparency right. The code is all in the devbiosim subversion repository on SourceForge, under the OpenGL examples spike.

Life is busy right now

I've got an exam coming up on Tuesday for Cell Bio. Work has been insanely busy (long days). My daughter has had a bunch of basketball games. With all of that, I haven't had time for much of anything else...even sleep time is suffering.

After my exam, I'm hoping to get back into the devbiosim code and make some headway.

Hellgate London

My son's copy of Hellgate London arrived on Friday, and I spent some time (too much time) on Saturday playing it while he was studying.

It is a well crafted game (as one would expect from the crew that did Diablo), but there didn't seem to be enough compelling differences to pull me away from WoW. Granted, the solo play is nice, and I'm only level 10 or so, but I do think I have the flavor of the game.

Uldaman run

Last night, we did a guild Uldaman run. It went pretty quick, as we had Fingerz (70 rogue) helping out. It is amazing how much damage a rogue can put out. We also had Wrizel, Scrooge, Pinksnappa, and Koen. Wrizel and Scrooge completed 8 quests in there (plus the subsequent chain turn-ins) and gained almost a full level (44.9 to 45.9).

Other than that, I've been working and going to class. This weekend will be a lot of studying, and my daughter has three basketball games, so projects will continue to slide.