{"id":664,"date":"2008-08-19T20:09:35","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T20:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/08\/19\/in_which_i_am_assaulted_by_inscrutable_dialogue_boxes\/"},"modified":"2008-08-19T20:09:35","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T20:09:35","slug":"in_which_i_am_assaulted_by_inscrutable_dialogue_boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/08\/19\/in_which_i_am_assaulted_by_inscrutable_dialogue_boxes\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I am assaulted by inscrutable dialogue boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I returned to the lab<\/a> last year, I wasn’t just changing fields of expertise: I was encountering a whole new way of doing science. Instead of tinkering on one gene or pathway, I found myself thrown headlong into the world of high through-put genomic screens \u2013 a world that came bundled with a lot of technologies<\/a> I had never before encountered. (A nice chap from Nature Protocols<\/em> interviewed<\/a> me about my experiences; if you’re interested, scroll down to the section called ‘My First Robot’.)<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nAnd your point is?<\/strong> User-friendly dialogue boxes are probably the least of a developer’s worries<\/p>\n

\nAll of this shiny kit, from aerodynamically automated microscope stages to zealously zippy liquid handling robots, is of course powered by software. When you buy a brand new piece of basic lab equipment \u2013 a PCR machine<\/a>, say \u2013 from a reputable supplier, you know that its software interface is going to work precisely as advertised. You grow to trust the reliability of the machinery in your lab; your own manual endeavors may be imperfect, but at least the kit is not going to screw up your experiment. What you learn very quickly, however, is that new technology breeds new software, and new software is inherently buggy. Developers \u2013 who are more often than not colleagues, or coders hired by equipment companies to facilitate the needs of a few valued customers \u2013 don’t have the time to test every last ramification of their code or to make the experience corporate-smooth, so it is left to the user to work out the ways and means of these often surprisingly finicky beasts.<\/p>\n

\nI had my first intensive experience with this at the EMBL in Heidelberg this past February, where I was learning<\/a> how to do high-throughput timelapse videomicroscopy RNAi screens. The patient and skilled technician who was assigned to help me out was a dab hand at setting up these screens, but she employed an almost a superstitious approach to achieving this without perturbing the whole system, which had been designed by Leica engineers especially for their facility and was very much a work in progress. “You see, it doesn’t like it if you do things out of order, even though you are supposed to be able to,” she whispered, as if the software might overhear and take offense. Deviate even one iota from a scripted task, she warned, just one errant click on the desktop or a too-long pause between steps, and the software would produce a floridly incomprehensible dialogue box (usually involving 25-digit numerals) and crash out the entire system, microscope and all. I recall one day when the software resisted even the sizeable charms of the technician and we banged our heads against the wall for eight solid hours trying to persuade the system to do its job.<\/p>\n

\nCloser to home, I am privileged to be able to work with a home-made database and associated programmes designed to help me store, compare and analyze all my phenotypic data. And it is marvelous. But it is a primitive affair, I must confess. The other day, while agonizing over a hierarchical clustering session, I encountered the oddest dialogue box I had ever seen (see image above). I had no idea what I did to cause it or what it meant, but I sent the screen grab to Richard<\/a> and it seemed to cheer him up, so it must have been of some use.<\/p>\n

\nYou’ll be happy to know I’ve since worked out how to cluster my phenotypes, but the pressing question still remains: who the hell is Alok, and what did I say about his stub that caused so much offense?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I returned to the lab last year, I wasn’t just changing fields of expertise: I was encountering a whole new way of doing science. Instead of tinkering on one gene or pathway, I found myself thrown headlong into the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}