That’s Life | doc w/ Pen

January 17, 2012

Just Read It: eBooks

I will admit. I love the feel of paper, of a tangible book in my hands. Flipping the pages, scribbling notes in the margin, highlighting and underlining … it’s a great sensation. After all, I was a Journalism major, with a focus in News Editorial, and I wrote for newspapers, magazines, and textbooks for years.

But. I must say, I am totally into the eReader thing these days. So many books are available in electronic format, and it makes them incredibly portable. Not to mention searchable, in a way regular books are not. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think “real” books are going the way of the dinosaur. I believe – and hope – that there will always be a market for them.

There are, however, a lot of positives about eBooks. Besides the portability and searchability features, there is the cost factor. I’ve heard that some eBooks are more expensive than the hard copy, but my experience has been the other way around – that the electronic versions tend to be cheaper, on the whole. (I got an incredible version of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species for $2.99.) And some are even free. I recently discovered, via a dear friend, that you can “check out” electronic books, by downloading them, from your local library. Yes, for free. The selection is somewhat limited, but not bad, considering the price. You just enter your library card number and password, click on the title, and if no one else has it checked out – just like a regular book, only one person can have a title checked out at a time – the book goes directly to your Kindle app. Pretty cool. I’m glad to see libraries are keeping up with the times.

You can always buy electronic books, of course; iBooks (Apple’s digital “bookstore”) and Amazon.com are the go-to places these days, it seems. One thing I really like about Amazon’s Kindle books is that you can send a free sample to your device (which includes my iPad) to test out the book before you buy it – just like if you were to go to a bookstore and read the first few pages. Here are a few Kindle titles I’ve downloaded to sample:

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Genetic Medicine: A Logic of Disease by Barton Childs, MD
On the Sparkling Nature of Human Origins by Talessian El-Wikosian
Watson & DNA by Victor McElheny
Genetic Twists of Fate by Stanley Fields and Mark Johnston
Inside the Human Genome by John C. Avise

Of course, reading even samples of books requires that you have time … which, in my life right now, is in short supply. But I hope to check out some of these titles, at least. Who knows what I’ll learn?

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January 4, 2012

A British Take On the TV Doc

Flip (or scroll) through your local television listings and you’ll find all kinds of medical shows, both fiction and non-fiction. There’s House, Gray’s Anatomy, ER, Nip Tuck, and so many more. And those are just the dramas. (I will admit, I used to watch old-school ER, back in my high school days.)

These days, though, I’m pretty picky about my television. I simply don’t have time to watch much, for one. And when it comes to medical shows, I am not a big fan of the sappy, soap-opera-y ones either.

Enter Doc Martin, a British medical drama a dear friend just introduced me to on New Year’s Eve. Doc Martin is a whip-smart, funny, and well-written show that takes place in the gorgeous region of Cornwall, England. The sheer cliffs, rolling green hills, and friendly fisherman are enough to make me want to go there. But there’s more to this show than the scenery. Here’s a bit about the show’s premise: Doc Martin was a prominent London surgeon who suddenly developed a phobia of blood (obviously, a serious problem for a surgeon). So he moved to a small Cornwall village to take over a general practitioner’s office. What you need to know about Doc Martin, and what makes this show so hilarious, is that he is absolutely socially inept. Which may be OK for a surgeon who spends most of his time with his patients under anesthesia, but is not so OK for a GP who spends most of his time with patients who are breathing (and talking) quite normally. There is, as well, a cast of colorful supporting characters (including a love interest of Doc Martin’s!) who round out the show.

I highly recommend checking it out. The first four seasons are available both on Netflix instant view and Amazon Prime video on demand. If you do watch an episode, let me know what you think!

Oh, and for a preview of what Cornwall looks like, here are two tantalizing photos …

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December 26, 2011

INDY: My Techno Bling

Back in January of this year, I wrote a post about things I was looking forward to in 2011. One of those things was an iPad 2. Had my circumstances (i.e., my marriage and living situation) not changed, perhaps I would have pre-ordered one as I suggested in that post. But things did change, in many ways, including financially. So throwing down $1,000 (or so, plus $25/month for a data plan) seemed impossible.

However, as I was wrapping my dad’s gift on Christmas Eve morning, suddenly I began channeling his “if-you-want-it-get-it” attitude. (It didn’t help that a good friend had just bought a new MacBook Pro, and we had only a few days ago been discussing our desire for iPads as well.) I put Dad’s gift down, hopped on my own MacBook Pro, and went to the Apple.com store. I briefly – only briefly – considered having my iPad 2 to-be shipped to me, but then realized that I desperately wanted it then and there. So I reserved it for in-store pick-up. (And yes, I actually went to the Apple store on Christmas Eve. It was not nearly as bad as I expected, especially since I was only there to pick up, and set up, my new device.)

Because it is my family’s tradition to open our gifts on Christmas Eve, I had little time to play with my new (and very expensive) toy that day, other than to import some of my iPhone apps. One of “Santa’s” gifts to me happened to be a $50 iTunes store gift card, which definitely came in handy the next day – Christmas morning – as I researched, imported, and downloaded more apps for both work and play. (One of those apps – BE Write HD – I am using to write this very blog post!)

So, my dear bloggers, meet INDY: my iPad 2. INDY is a reference to a gene in Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly, about whom I have written much), which, when mutated, makes a fly live twice as long. I’m definitely hoping my iPad’s “genes” are good! (But I did buy AppleCare just in case.) The gene is called “INDY” in reference to a line from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which a person who is being taken to be buried yells out, “I‘m not dead yet!” (See the movie still on this page.) The name is a perfect confluence of my interests: words (and more specifically, acronyms), British humor, genetics, mutations, and Drosophila. I think it’s just darn cute, too.

While the device itself is also quite cute, it is also quite functional, given that there are literally hundreds of thousands of apps available to download. Those apps basically enable this little tablet to do much (though not all) of what a laptop can do, for much less than you’d pay for computer software. The most expensive app I bought (QuickOffice, $14.99) allows you to create and edit Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. Compare that to $119.99 for Microsoft Office. I also bought a PDF reader app (iAnnotate, $9.99) which allows you to do many of the things that Adobe’s professional program does. This will save me on printing, because I can use my PubMed or Nature Reader apps to look up research articles, download them to my iPad, and then highlight, draw, or take notes on them. Pretty sweet. These apps will also come in handy for school, of course. As will my favorite flashcards app (flashcards++, $3.99), which lets me import flashcards that I’ve made online (I use Quizlet.com) and test myself with my iPad or iPhone. I’ve been using them on my iPhone, but many of the flashcards I’ve made have graphics or diagrams that are hard to see on the small screen. Having an iPad will make it easier to study, clearly!

Along with reading PDFs, I can also read magazines and books on my iPad. I’ve already downloaded a book I’ve had my eye on for some time – “Nature’s Robots: A History of Proteins” – through Amazon’s Kindle app (which also works on the iPad).

Then there are games. And more games. Many of them will run you only a buck or two, although I shelled out a whopping $4.99 for Riven, the sequel to the game Myst I played on my Mac desktop as a kid. (Again, compare to the list price of $29.99.) I’m also currently addicted to Bejewled ($0.99), which has a Tetris-like feel to it. I think that’s the most use I’ve gotten from a single dollar in a LOOONG time.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the apps and features available on the iPad. This is going to be fun …