tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32079676.post6817352396122793607..comments2024-02-13T21:22:02.522-08:00Comments on RRResearch: GeneSpring not needed?Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32079676.post-2913640793938873512006-12-03T18:57:00.000-08:002006-12-03T18:57:00.000-08:00Just yesterday I made a backup of our array data o...Just yesterday I made a backup of our array data on Black Swan. I shall deposit the disks in your office tomorrow morning. This came about because Black Swan was down to a 100Mb of memory and was having startup troubles/couldn't burn disks/etc. There were several gigs of Otto lab array data that I backed up and then deleted - now Black Swan appears to be swimming smoothly again.Some call me Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08388028207243011194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32079676.post-69377170798882148512006-12-03T05:41:00.000-08:002006-12-03T05:41:00.000-08:00If I was asked for one key piece of advice to give...If I was asked for one key piece of advice to give to people aspiring to combine computing and biology, it would be that the plain ASCII delimited text file is the most useful type of file that there is. It's easily readable by people and machines. You can import it to a spreadsheet, drop it into a database table, use it to plot simple graphs with any graphing package, read and parse it with <i>e.g.</i> Perl, edit it in any text editor and any number of other things.<br /><br />GeneSpring not needed? Commercial software not needed, period. The only way that companies can market software is by tying you to their proprietary file formats, unreadable by anything but their programs. There are so many thousands of freely-available packages based on the absurdedly-simple but effective notion of plain, simple text files. You'll wonder why you ever paid for software.<br /><br />Congratulations on taking a step towards freedom!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com