Solid Geekery

Hello readers, I’m Jill. As it says in my profile, I am working on my PhD in neuroscience. My research involves a brain structure called the amygdala and it’s role in processing faces. Our lab uses brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). I hope to be finished within the next year, but I guess we will see when it comes time to actually write my dissertation. Enough about me, let’s move on to my first blog on this site.

Space…the final frontier. This is a blog about the voyages of Jillian. Her 5-year mission: obtain a PhD while unlocking the secrets of the brain and to boldly go where no graduate student has ever gone before…graduation. Okay, that mission has already been blown since it will be at least 5.5 years until I finish. But I digress.

Just for the record, I am not a Trekkie. I just used the opening narration from Star Trek to introduce this blog, which, in some sense, is about space and my own personal final frontier: Linux (pronounced “Lynn-ucks” or “Lie-nucks, depending on how sophisticated you fancy yourself). It seems that lately I have become somewhat of a Linux nerd, which is strange because I knew virtually nothing about it before I started my graduate degree. Prior to 2003, I used Windows exclusively and mostly to feed my obsession with celebrity gossip, airline disaster investigations, and Ebay. Lots and lots of Ebay.

My dirty little affair with Linux

Because my lab analyzes a majority of data within the Linux operating system, I had no choice but to get on board. It was a massive learning curve considering I had a BS in biology and a mind that absolutely rejected any type of logic, including Boolean. But I didn’t even get the chance to find even footing, because I was thrown into the world of Linux so fast it gave me motion sickness. The notes I took from those first days were frenetic: page after page of scribbled nonsense, streaks of whiteout (from fixing instructions that were either conveyed incorrectly to me or wrongly interpreted in my spinning mind), and many, many arrows pointing everywhere.

At this point, you have probably realized that I haven’t told you what Linux actually is (hint: it’s a computer operating system). If you want a true understanding of Linux and how it works, try checking out the official website becase my own personal explanation would almost assuredly be 65.64% incorrect. What I can tell you is that after my initial encounter with Linux and the subsequent months of data analysis that followed, I had a better grasp on everything but still couldn’t connect all the dots.

Fast forward to September 2007. The short of what happened: New experiment, new data to analyze. Lone Linux IT guy no longer in the picture. Linux kernel and Linux-based operating system version (called Fedora) desperately obsolete. Forced to personally reformat and upgrade Linux partition of own computer. Then modified and personalized to meet specific needs. Large amounts of ibuprofen taken, infinitesimal amount of mistakes made and then corrected, foul words put together in unimaginable strings, and fingers crossed over and over and over. In all, 3 months total used to get it running and (mostly) free of bugs.

The result? I actually understand Linux. I experienced the classic Archimedes “eureka” moment. Okay, so I may not be an aficionado, but I know my way around. And what I don’t know, I can use that crazy interweb thing to to point me in the right direction. Me and Google, we’re tight. Linux, it turns out, is not just for computer nerds (thanks to Lesly for this link). Or maybe I am just delusional, it’s hard to tell.

The lost Aesop’s fable

Let me now stand on my soapbox and dole out the advice: doing something on your own imparts far more knowledge than just learning from a book or from someone else. Think of phrase “you have to get your hands dirty”. It may be overused and trite, but it is utterly true. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and what causes our heads to ache, our eyes to strain, and our nerves to fray can also make us stronger. Can you hear the imaginary inspirational music?

My name is Jillian, and I use a dual boot Dell computer with a 2.2.26 Linux kernel and Fedora 8, a Gnome platform, root privileges, and my shell of choice is bash. Somebody make me a t-shirt.