from the desk of stinkpot

just grabbed my first meal of street food in bangkok. i made sure to take ice in my glass and pour myself some water from the table jug of green tea.
your move gut microbes.

I’ve recently started my last (hopefully) thesis project on my way to my PhD. The project will be a study of the human gut microbiome; to analyze it, I’ll be embarking on an investigation of several months worth of human feces.  (And, if that high-level description grosses you out — be very afraid of the [...]

heard larry wall, creator and benevolent dictator for life of the perl programming language, speak today.
glad i went.  the first 15 minutes or so was a bizarre stream-of-consciousness race through about 100 1-word slides.  it was both profound and absurd, both celebration and diatribe.  equally fun was seeing MIT in its finest geek culture glory: [...]

Now that spring has sprung itself upon us, I’m hoping it’s safe to start posting pictures of what winters in Boston are like:

I gave a 20-minute talk today to about 200 grad students, post docs, and faculty at a departmental retreat. I think the talk went pretty well — I don’t think I rushed at all and I stayed on time. Folks I met afterwards also appeared enthusiastic about my material / delivery.
The relative ease [...]

wonderful transaction seen scribbled on a bathroom stall here at school:

i’m working on my thesis committee meeting slides under the loft bed in our bedroom.  christina is asleep “upstairs,” exhausted from the drain of med school.  fortunately for my blog, christina’s exhaustion and her penchant for sleep talking are on good terms.
christina: “yeah!”
me: “yeah what?”
christina: “the liver is filling inconsistently.”
me: “how should the liver fill?”
christina: [...]

i don’t think i’ve blogged about this topic yet; with the aid of some wonderful experimental collaborators and my advisor, i co-authored a paper in science this past summer on microbial ecology. my contribution to the project was an algorithm i named AdaptML. it’s a pretty cool algorithm*: i think it’s one of [...]

great moment #432:
you’re brainstorming in your advisor’s office and the conservation culminates in his declaration: “we’ll become the watson and crick of poop!”
i love grad school.

i had dinner with a good friend from high school — JD — last friday night.  we traded stories from high school, most notably reminiscing how he had actually dated lady gaga and brought her to prom.
JD is now studying architecture up the street at harvard.
it was insanely fun to talk to someone who devotes [...]