How to build a colorful life around life extension using different skills: a personal story

Here’s an edited version of my Quora answer to the question: “Life Decisions: How do people who are talented in many areas decide what to do with their lives?“ Let me provide a personal story illuminating one option Ruchira is talking about: “pick a complex challenge that you are passionate about, that will require many different…

Even ugly handwriting can fit the informal nature of SciFoo

I had problems with my handwriting since elementary schools, or at least my teachers had continuous problems with it. Even during my university years I was asked sometimes to read out loud my essays, papers to them otherwise risking bad grades. Maybe it’s because I am a hidden right-handed using my left hand for writing…

Just ordered my 23andMe kit for $399+shipping!

It was time for me to enter personally into the age of commercialized-personalized genetics/genomics and not just to talk about it! New price, new customers! Here is my suggestion to the sales department of 23andMe! 23andMe Democratizes Personal Genomics With New Analytical Platform

Leaving New Orleans: freebies from me

Ok, I am officially done with New Orleans and moved to the Bay Area for the next couple of days to come, BioBarCamp and SciFoo Camp. On the photo some things I left behind and contributed with them to the culture of this special city.

Help Craig Newmark find a new hobby on Twitter!

Internet celebrities are not celebrities in a sense that you can easily communicate with them on services like Twitter (assuming the services are not down). There’s no such thing as an internet bodyguard except some firewalls in Windows. So this day I found Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder tweeting this: I suggested him a forward looking…

The Sergey, Larry, Eric test by Anne & Linda: 23andMe at home

“We really think that we can change Health Care…I want to change it in 5 years…it has to change and that’s we all are about” – says Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe co-founder, in the Google Tech Talk on Googling the Googlers’ DNA: A Demonstration of the 23andMe Personal Genome Service. Also a good presentation by Linda…

Sergey Brin goes mobile in 2000 & a Russian lesson

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder is a very interesting man. His story is the number one immigrant success story in the USA today, I dare say. I have 2 Brin videos to show you today: In the first one, Sergey demonstrates mobility in 2000 in 3 ways with his ‘faint accent that is no longer identifiably…

Personal genetics test-takers are future risk-takers

A good introduction in Nature on the risks and advantages of letting people know their genetic risk information via personal genetics services. I do hope that the test-takers will finally become the risk overtakers. Helen Pearson: Genetic testing for everyone Direct-to-consumer genetic testing is a rapidly growing market — the past year has seen the…

What’s your current science related desktop image?

Desktop background images are important parts of people’s everyday lives in terms of unintended staring time. Usually they are picked up for the eyes (sg spectacular & cool and/or sexy) and hearts (family members), but why not use them for information uptake and learning? So I’d like to ask: What’s your current science related desktop…

Manhattan trip: F.Murray Abraham, Warhammer geek, dead Barbie…

Say Hello to my new 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.5.2 MacBook right from the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, New York City! We are back in New Orleans waiting for the swarm of the formosan termites. Let me recall some Manhattan moments with the help of quick iPhone photos.…

New York City trip, 8-11, May, we’d like to meet you!

Anna and me are visiting New York City from 8th to 11th, Sunday this week. We are eager to meet geeky figures particularly as our current location, New Orleans is not really a heaven for tech-savvy people. If interested to meet with us, drop me a line: [attilacsordas][at][gmail.com]

How to predict the future via Twitter: Google invests in Navigenics

Wow, I guess it’s time for me to move into the stock market business! Here’s the story via David Bradley’s tweet: Julie Kent, Search Engine Journal, April 21st, 2008: Google Wants to Index Genetic Information, Invests in Second DNA Start-Up In 2007, Google made headlines when they invested $4.4 million in 23andMe, a genetic screening…

The Tweet Cloud of a biotech geek blogger

With TweetClouds (scripting: John Krutsch design: Jared Stein) people can generate the Tweet Cloud of a Twitter user. In case of bloggers/Twitters it is an interesting question whether there are any strong differences between the category cloud/Tweet Cloud of the same person suggesting patterns in web behavior. I’ve just generated mine. One obvious difference is…

“What is the meaning of life?” for a life extensionist

In No kidding, I am a cum laude philosopher, and so can you! it turned out that finally I got a philosophy diploma. That said, from now on I am officially qualified to think on the big questions of life. For instance, I can find out new arguments and concepts and I can answer (or…

No kidding, I am a cum laude philosopher, and so can you!

My mom’s acquired this diploma 3 weeks ago back in Budapest and it has an English translation so I can share it with you:

Larry Page is 35 years old today: long live to live long enough!

I’ve always loved the following scene from LOTR, but I’ve always imagined that they are the words of a man who is in a healthy physiological condition due to a robust life extension technology and not due to a mystical ring: Bilbo: “Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday!” Hobbits: “Happy birthday!” Bilbo: “Alas,…

Thesis live: Introduction, “contents” draft

From now on I start every “thesis live” post with the standard introduction: In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential…

Warming up to write my thesis on the blog

Not much happened since my announcement on Editing my doctoral thesis on stem cells in a blog: Why not?. I went to the U.S. first and started doing research instead of finishing my PhD education. But now I am back in this “getting a PhD” business as in January I passed the prerequisite comprehensive stem…

Friday lunch heaven for a Gumbo loving biogeek at Tulane

Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans

It’s weekend and time to visit the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and meet the dragons and the rays after the Trolls, Gators, Swamp Monsters.

Last cell counting of the year 2007

Boo, our XO laptop shipped to our home and its twin to a child somewhere

In November we participated in the “Give One Get One” program in which people can donate an XO laptop to a child in the developing world and receive one. Yesterday we got ours, named Boo and Anna recorded the first moments of Boo at our home and published it on her blog Videovoo with detailed…

Is it by accident that both Google first ladies are biologists?

Or is it the strongest personal indication of the future of technology? No, it’s not my job to answer this question, but I could be optimistic about the consequences of it. By now the story of Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin and 23andMe is a commonplace in the blogosphere. While Anne is graduated with a BS…

The birthplace of America’s first superhero: downtown Budapest

It’s weekend which means I am not just about biology and biotech blogging and can allocate a little time to spend on other projects like visiting the nearest Barnes & Noble at Metairie (it is a shame that there are no big bookstores in Uptown New Orleans except the Tulane Campus) and buying new books…

Last minute, low budget Halloween costume: Mr. Evil Google

Components from top to bottom: Insulated Test/Jumper Leads wig blue ethernet cable original Google T-shirt (I got mine at the Euro Maker Faire) badge (actually I used my SciFoo badge just inside out, there was a modified Google Search Box on the other side with an “I am feeling Evil” button) components desperately needed, but…

Meeting with Mark Zupan at Juan’s Flying Burrito in New Orleans

Mark Zupan is a tough guy, he is the captain of the United States quadriplegic wheelchair rugby team. Mark was the main character in the award-winning documentary entitled Murderball, a film I was impressed so much when I had seen it back at home in my favorite Toldi mozi. Mark was restricted to a wheelchair…

Feed reading trends: I am a Valleywag addict, help me!

Show me your feed reading habits and I’ll tell you who you are! I hope this statement is not true as according the item reading trends on Google Reader I have been a serious Valleywag addict in the last 30 days and more, I suspect. Although extensively reading a funny, well-informed but malicious tech gossip…

Greg Block’s Oracy and science as an exercise in humanitarianism

Did you now what oracy means? Never mind. From late September, Oracy is the blog of Tulane grad student and colleague Gregory Block, whom you can catch now just in the middle of finding his blog voice. Topics are focused on rants about science (specially stem cells), Greg’s melancholy music and stories from New Orleans.…

Going to the Austin Maker Faire, October 20-21

At last a real family event for Anna and me: we are heading to Travis County Fairgrounds, Austin, Texas on October 19th to visit the MakerFaire. This will be the 3rd American MakerFaire, and the first outside the Bay Area. I am prepared to meet enthusiastic makers and mind-blowing DIY projects there, as well as…

My gmail spam box looks like this, what about yours?

Back to Cambridge

I am off to Cambridge to the SENS3 conference. The New Orleans – Washington – Heathrow London – Cambridge trip is about 16 hours from house to house. I’ll be based at Pembroke College. The picture was made by Anna last year in Cambridge at the steps of the old Cavendish Laboratory Building on Free…

Trivia: Joshua Davis, the journalist is not Joshua Davis, the designer

So far I’ve had the wrong belief that my favourite Wired Journalist, Joshua Davis is the same person as Joshua Davis, the designer, who once has been featured in Wired (not by Joshua Davis, the journalist). The root of my misconception was the common source of my knowledge on these 2 guys, namely Wired magazine.…

Weekend schedule: watching the 5-Day Track Forecast Cone of Hurricane Dean

Ok, I am living in New Orleans with my wife, so here is a true local color: online hurricane watching as we are in the middle of the season. Unfortunately we don’t have a car yet, just bikes, but we try to rent one tomorrow, who knows. I’ve just set up a 2 week cell…

For benchwork scientists, it’s always Christmas time: unpacking kits and gifts

One particular advantage of being an experimental scientist is that you are getting nicely packed gifts all the time as you are constantly ordering the kits and material that you need for you experiments. For instance I’ve just got this cute, childishly designed Micro BCA Protein Assay Kit developed for measuring protein concentration in the…

3minutemadness at SciFoo, 2007

At the opening session at SciFoo at the Googleplex, everybody had to stand up and say 1 intro sentence and 3 words or phrases describing the interests and expertises of the person. pseudonomad caught my intro (the name of the picture: 3minutemadness) with his iPhone: What did I say exactly: don’t remember the intro (a…

SciFoo Camp, 2007: words and recommendations

The Sci Foo check-in process is a happy one, unlike other check-ins: when you are in, the organizers give you gifts, take a photo on you (to put it on a board) and you are asked to fill in a short intro paper with 2 points: 5 words or phrases that describe your interests and…

Physics geeks, get a retro car!

Audobon Zoo, New Orleans: Trolls, Gators, Swamp Monsters

Pictures made with iPhone by Anna.  

Why I failed as the 42nd in the iPhone line and why it is not a problem

I just got back to my Uptown New Orleans apartment from the 5300 Tchoupitoulas St. Cingular store, where I was unable to buy the last 4 gig iPhone. Why? I do not have an American social security number yet as I’ve just arrived to the States 2 weeks ago and applied for the SSN last…

Polite blackout at the French Quarter