Researchers synthesize healing compounds in scorpion venom
Stanford chemists have identified and synthesized two new healing
compounds in scorpion venom that are effective at killing staph and
tuberculosis bacteria.
When living in Mexico I kept a few specimen of the scorpion species used in
this research: Diplocentrus melici. You can see photos of this
species and its habitat in Disappearing claws in the dark.
Hypericum calycinum flower
On our way back from the town centre I took photos of a yellow flowers
which the PlantSnap app on my iPhone 5
identified as Hypericum calycinum.
The yellow flower of Hypericum calycinum.
What is Open? Common misconceptions
We’ve discussed a great number of topics over the past couple of
years, strike one: What is open source?
In the early afternoon I noticed a new growth on the Lady of the Night
orchid I had given to my mother for mother's
day. And while taking
photos with my iPhone 5 I spotted another one.
I have been looking almost daily for new growths as I hope it will
flower in June. And maybe we'll get lucky.
Brassavola nodosa with new growths to the left and right.
Especially the new growth to the right looks like it is going to be
both a leaf and a flower stalk, as the latter grows from the former.
Automating Debian install in QEMU
I recently wanted to automate building a headless Debian testing
(codename “buster”) virtual machine, hosted on macOS, and it turned
out to be somewhat more complicated than I expected, so I thought
I’d document it here for others’ benefit.
On our way to my aunt my mother and I encountered a beautiful and
friendly cat resting on top of a garbage can. I couldn't resist to pet
it which the cat enjoyed.
A cat resting on top of a garbage can.
Use mmap with care
Using mmap in desktop applications has some serious caveats, and
here's why:
When building Net::SSLeay, a Perl module, on Ubuntu 19.04 the log
contained the following error after the build process halted prematurely.
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lz
This was fixed by installing the zlib1g-dev package as follows:
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
HTTP headers for the responsible developer
Developers have the power to build the web for everyone, but that
power needs to be used responsibly. What matters, in the end, is
building things that help and enable people.