Cavalcade of Mammals

Picked up a GeneTac 1000, a biochip scanner. Here are teardown pictures:
Here is the unit:

Teardown pictures. The unit has a self-contained lamp module that plugs into the main controller unit (EG&G Optoelectronics, Model # 300mXT-04, lamp module LM-300MX). Can’t find much about it–looks to be a 300W lamp. The center of the unit has a CCD camera, a Nikon lens, and a big custom lens, and two sets of filters. The slide carousel is on the other side.

MONITOR=$(pactl list | egrep -A2 ‘^(\*\*\* )?Source #’ | grep ‘Name: .*\.monitor$’ | awk ‘{print $NF}’ | tail -n1)

goes to alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor on my system

LAMEOPTIONS=’ -s 44.1 –preset cbr 192′
FILENAME=foo.mp3

Record currently playing audio:
parec -d $MONITOR | lame $LAMEOPTIONS -r $FILENAME

Split into separate 1 hr files with a 3 sec overlap:
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00 -t 01:00:03 -i foo.mp3 $1.01.mp3 -acodec copy
ffmpeg -ss 01:00:00 -t 01:00:03 -i foo.mp3 $1.02.mp3 -acodec copy

Commands from here

The Former Dentist Uncovering Sugar’s Rotten Secrets by Francie Diep
University of California–San Francisco researcher Cristin Kearns dropped a promising career at the Kaiser Foundation to dig through sugar industry archives for a smoking gun. With help from the man who brought down Big Tobacco, she’s now proving that Big Sugar steered scientists away from looking at the ingredient’s harmful effects.

Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies: How the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill? by Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens

I’m growing some cacti from seeds. I have seeds for:
opuntia engelmannii

ferocactus gracilis

echinocactus grusonii

opuntia violacea

myrtillocactus geometrizans

hylocereus undatus