Normally I stick to posts about science and technology on this blog. Like most Australians, I vote in elections, try to remain informed, but otherwise stay away from getting involved in politics. However, occasionally certain things become important enough issues that they need to be advertised more widely.
As you may know, the Australian Federal Government is attempting to censor the Internet within Australia by forcing ISPs to block a list of websites. This proposed internet filter will not be optional; it will effect all Australians, and the blocklist will compiled by a small group of people. The list of blocked sites will remain secret, so the Australian public will find it difficult to determine if this power is being abused. It will not prevent the spread of illegal material, which is typically shared via peer-to-peer networks that will not be blocked by the internet filter. If it is not already self evident why this approach to internet censorship is both an ineffective, a waste of resources and a potential threat to the freedom of information flow required for a healthy democracy, you can read more at the Great Australian Internet Blackout site and the Electronic Frontiers Australia site.
The Great Australian Internet Blackout is a combined online and offline demonstration against this imposed online censorship. For one week – January 25-29th – Aussie websites will “black out” to inform an even wider audience about the threat of imposed censorship.
This is what it looks like right now. I'm guessing that on January 25th something exciting (or educational) will appear inside that popup box !
Continue reading ‘The Great Australian Internet Blackout Wordpress Plugin’
Those who have been watching may have noticed I quietly started developing an Android application in the last month or so. It’s still super-buggy and far from feature complete, but I thought it was time to announce it here (”release early, release often”). It’s not ready for real users yet, but developers may like to take a little look.
Continue reading ‘Occyd : tagging for locations’
A quick post to share some bookmarklets I made.
I’ve found QR-code “2D barcodes” really handy when playing with my Android phone.
Sometimes, I have a web page open on my desktop PC, and I want to quickly load it in the Android Chrome browser to see what it looks like. Rather than re-typing it with my thumbs, the Barcode Scanner application allows me to scan a QR-code from the screen of my computer, and if the decoded text contains a URL, open it in the Android browser.
These two bookmarklets turn the URL of the current page that is open in your browser into a scannable QR-code:
Google Charts API based bookmarklet: Drag this link –>Current URL to QR-code to your bookmarks toolbar.
The code is:
javascript:location.href='http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=350x350&chl='+escape(location.href);
Alternatively, I made a Kaywa QR-code generator version. Drag this link –>Current URL to QR-code to your bookmarks toolbar.
The code is:
javascript:location.href='http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d='+escape(location.href);
They both do the same thing, so you probably only want one. Only tested on Firefox.
(Update: seemed Wordpress ate the javascript in the bookmarklet links … should be okay now)
Many University libraries use some server software called Ezproxy to do authentication and arbitrate access to full-text online journal subscriptions. Essentially, Ezproxy uses some URL mangling, rewriting all hyperlinks, to pass traffic via the proxy (rather than using a conventional browser proxy setting). For example, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5785/314 is changed to http://www.sciencemag.org.ezproxy.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cgi/content/full/313/5785/314 . If the user is not logged in to the proxy (ie has no fresh & valid cookie), a login screen is given before being forwarded to the journal site.
This plugin helps mangle URLs to add the proxy domain to outgoing links from various journal sites as well as NCBI PubMed (eg, like .ezproxy.lib.unimelb.edu.au), meaning that the user doesn’t actively have to go to their library site to follow “ezproxy-fied” links. It makes getting full-text articles via the institutional library proxy a more seamless experience (assuming that your library subscribes to the journal).
The plugin contains a list of journal and publisher sites at which it is active, plus some “special case” code for making sure only fulltext links outgoing from NCBI PubMed are handled. You can add your own journal sites as needed.
The user needs to edit the variable proxyname to make the script use their institutions EZproxy … I can’t really help you with that part, since I only know that my workplace (The University of Melbourne) uses .ezproxy.lib.unimelb.edu.au .. beyond that, you are on your own 
!
I’ve uploaded the Library Ezproxy Forwarder script to Userscripts.org
I recently needed to make a simple, two dimensional figure of a beta-barrel membrane protein. I went hunting for programs that might take a sequence and/or structure and produce a pretty looking diagram to save me constructing everything by hand. Here are two I found and tried.
Continue reading ‘Software review: producing two dimensional diagrams of membrane proteins’
