MCAndre

An email from the Vice President, University Relations sent to all George Mason students:

/Below is an important message concerning protecting against staff infections. This information was prepared by Dr. Gigi Abdalla of Student Health Services./

Oh no! Not staff infections!

*What is MRSA?*

MRSA is the name given to a group of bacteria that belong to the Staphylococcus aureus (SA) family of bacteria. Most Staphylococcus aureus bacteria can be treated with medicines called methicillin-type antibiotics. However, certain types of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria cannot be treated with methicillin-type antibiotics - the bacteria are resistant to these drugs. These are called Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

The real reason we’re all screwed is that our University Relations VP has no communications skills. ZOMG, methicillin-type antibiotic resistant bacteria! In other words, the UltraStaph.

It’s estimated that one in three healthy people carry Staphyloccocus aureus bacteria on their skin, in their noses or in the back of their throats and are healthy and have no symptoms. This is known as being colonized.

Gaa, illegal alians colonizing in our noses!

*How is MRSA spread?*

A person can become colonized or infected with MRSA if the bacteria enter the body by:

* skin contact with a person carrying MRSA on their skin
* contact with surfaces and objects that have been touched or used
by someone carrying MRSA, such as door handles, razors, towels and
sheets
* contact with dust that contains skin particles carrying MRSA
* By touching an open wound or scratching damaged skin, people who
are colonized by MRSA can transfer the bacteria from their hands
into their body, leading to infection.

In other words, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING EVER.

*How can I avoid MRSA skin infections?*

* Keeping your hands clean by washing them thoroughly; before and
after eating meals, and after using the toilet.
* Keeping cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a plaster or
dressing.
* Avoiding touching other people’s wounds or dressings.
* Avoiding sharing personal items such as towels or razors.
* Reporting any unclean toilet or bathroom facilities to the proper
authorities.
* If you use local gym, to minimize any potential risk, you should
wipe any equipment before and after use, use a barrier (such as a
clean towel or clothing) to prevent your skin touching it and
shower after your workout.

My daily wound-touching quota won’t just fill itself, ok?

*What does a staph or MRSA infection look like?*

Staph bacteria, including MRSA, can cause skin infections that may look like a pimple or boil and can be red, swollen, painful, or have pus or other drainage. More serious infections may cause pneumonia, bloodstream infections, or surgical wound infections.

Away, pimpled demon!

*

What should I do if I think I have a staph or MRSA infection?*
See your healthcare provider.

Sorry, our Department of Useful Information is closed on Fridays.

I used an Engadget tutorial and FARK’s colors to make a custom Mac RSS screensaver.

Preview:

My roommate needs a cable to connect his Mac to a huge monitor for watching movies. He found an HDMI to DVI adapter at the Apple store. Price: $119.95. Then he looked for one on other sites. Newegg price: $7.99. He comments, “But the Apple one is one foot longer.”

I’ve test driven Ruby for a couple months, and Lua for a few weeks. I’d like to combine Python’s slices with Ruby’s iterators. The syntax looks a little funny at first, but it makes more sense. Python’s

[str(e) for e in things]

is neat, like Ruby’s

things.collect { |e| e.to_s }

but more complicated chains of iterators get too confusing in Python’s syntax. Ruby’s

things.each_line.each_word.each_byte.collect { |e| e }

would be

[byte for byte in [word for word in [line for line in things]]]

in Python.

I wish Ruby Strings#each would iterate over characters instead of lines. There needs to be a String#get_bytes method, and I can’t wait for Ruby 2, as String#ord and Integer#chr are so necessary. Using

"b"[0]

to get the ASCII ordinal is just stupid.

I’d like to remove “then” from Lua, remove the coroutine constructs for simple “yield”s, and change pairs() and ipairs() to “for e in thing” and “for i, e in thing.i_pairs()”. The difference between pairs() and ipairs() is mostly useless. ipairs() is preferrable for tables and lists. The range syntax should be moved to a range() method. Also, why should I ever use

#things

to get thing’s length if it doesn’t apply to every table? Why have #things and things.n? It’s kind of like the difference between Python’s str(thing) and thing.__str__.

Six months were spent on a Python video game, under the (incorrect) assumption that defining variables in a class’s definition is the same as setting them in an initializing method. Both Ruby and Python end up changing superclass variables when this happens. Bad:

class Swallow
    @velocity=4
end

class AfricanSwallow < Swallow
    @velocity=6
end

Defining AfricanSwallow changes Swallow’s velocity, even though single @’s were used. The various tutorials told me that single @’s mean instance variables and double @’s mean class variables. Only if the variables are created in an initialize() call. One more thing: why do Rubyists have to write out the full “initialize” instead of “init”? It’s String#to_i, not String#to_integer. Lastly, attr_accessor is dumb. There’s no reason to make anything private anymore.

Monkeypatching in Ruby and Lua is great.

Building Python and Ruby apps on Macs is tough. Everything is undocumented, broken, and dependent on old versions. I’m glad Leopard is going to include the latest Ruby. Maybe then RubyCocoa will make a good installer, WxRuby will grow up, and Xcode will give a crap about Python. Freaking incorporate Gtk, Apple! It’s my dream to write GUI apps for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh that are entirely multiplatform. Not possible unless I use Tk or convince my school to fucking unblock IRC for help compiling WxRuby apps on Mac OS.