Notes on genomics internet research

Some Videos:
Barry Schuler: An introduction to genomics - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks /barry_schuler_genomics_101.html

Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KdOPY1Iqiw
"A single genomics company outputs more data in a single month than is held in the US Library of Congress"

Craig Venter: A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5X6Qy772YU

One thing that is really interesting about the first two videos is the analogy to computers that both Schuler and Enriquez use to explain the DNA involvement in genomics. Schuler takes it one step further to say that modifying the software also modifies the hardware. I find this concept very intriguing and confirms my interest in this field. I'm very excited that I have changed my undergrad major and plan on going into bioinformatics.

Just when I thought I was done

So I don't have to worry about the GAC for the Xceed components, but MapInfo used GAC assemblies to distribute the MapXtreme application we use to display maps inside our C#.Net app.

So here are a few more articles I've found in my quest for knowledge...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315682

CodeProject summary of GAC concepts - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/demystifygac.aspx?df=100&forumid=15829&exp=0&select=856234

How to get a dll from the GAC - http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/wellink/archive/2006/07/12/12947.aspx

Registering a

one of those lol moments

Turns out the easiest way to work with managed dll's is to not register and access them through GAC, but rather directly. This cuts out a huge headache of dealing with tying into the OS.

After all the research I've done, I'm kinda glad to be rid of it...

Playing with assemblies in the GAC

There's a tool in the .Net Framework SDK for messing with .Net's Global Assembly Cache called gacutil.exe. This tool allows you to get information about existing registered assemblies in the cache, register new assemblies, etc...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex0ss12c(VS.80).aspx

.Net 3.5 SP1 framework download (for offline installation) - http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe

NSIS color coding for TextMate

Color coding for NSIS in TextMate would rock right about now...

silently installing .Net 3.5

Very good info about the installation requirements of .Net 3.5 - http://www.msfn.org/board/NET-Framework-35-Silent-Installer-t108344.html

reasons why the .Net 3.5 framework installer might want to still go out to the web - http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2008/07/17/8745415.aspx

.Net 3.5 offline installer - http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0/f/60fc5854-3cb8-4892-b6db-bd4f42510f28/dotnetfx35.exe

According to this forum listing you should be able to run a local copy of the offline .Net 3.5 framework installation from the command line with the /q for a silent installation. In testing this it looks like its good to go. I've been working with this line in my .Net installer component for past NSIS installations (with older .Net runtime installations):
ExecWait '$TEMP\dotnetfx.exe /q /c:"install /q"'

so on the regular command line this would look more like:
>dotnetfx35.exe /q /c:/"install /q"

With the older .net installation it was easy just to store it inside of the setup.exe I was compiling, extract it to the temp dir, and run it from there. We've been using .net 2.0 with this approach, when the .net installation was a mere 20mb. Now the offline .Net 3.5 sp1 release is closer to 200mb. So storing the .net installation in the setup.exe only adds time to the installation and wastes considerably more hard drive space on the target deployment machine for installation purposes only (once installed, the .net installation doesn't need to remain on the machine).

So I'll be revising a couple of lines in my custom NSIS .Net install module.

GAC: Global Assembly Cache

Using NSIS, I'm writing an installer for a .Net based application along with third party software that the application depends on. We're going to registering some managed .Net .dll's into the GAC (or the Global Assembly Cache).

Since I've never done this before I did a little bit of research. Suffice it to say Wikipedia was a more helpful resource than Microsoft's Knowledge base in getting started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Assembly_Cache

Let the fun begin!

vista accessing remote shares

I worked on a Vista machine today that was not able to access remote shares, and so couldn't map network drives, etc. It was able to get online, rdp to the server, and perform other network based tasks.

When trying to map the drive out over the command line, an error 67 would return. When trying to access the share from Windows Explorer, I would get an unspecified error number. (probably would have been nicer to receive an error that a service responsible for this functionality was not accessible.

What ended up being the problem was that the Computer Browser Windows service was not able to start because it depends on the Workstation Windows service that for some reason had been disabled.

setting up email on the iPhone

This is definitely something that was easier to do on the blackberry. Maybe its partly my servers using non-standard ports, but all my blackberry needed was my email address and password and it set itself up completely for all of my email accounts.

Apple needs to work on this if they want to keep serious email people happy.