Ha pasado lo impensable. Después de catorce años desde las películas, y de veinticinco años desde la serie original, ha terminado Evangelion. Anno lo ha vuelto a hacer: nos ha dejado con la boca abierta. Porque contra todo pronóstico, increíblemente, Evangelion explica la mayor parte de las cosas y acaba en un buen final.
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This is my first kind of serious project in bioinformatics. I had to prepare some de novo transcriptome assemblies from weird organisms using publicly available data, and I took the chance to learn a little bit how to automate processes using bash scripting, virtual environments, a a lot of variables and flags.
I have named this pristine, and it can be found in my github repository.
I will keep working on it as I learn how to code and make new things. I recently saw a way to download and transfer fastq data into other softwares on-the-go as it is downloaded using UNIX pipes. I will try to check if something like this could be done, how cool.
Cheers!
(and no, I did not forget about the last post of the multicellularity story. I just need free time and energies to sit down and finish it :’) )
I turn 28 today.
It is difficult for me to try and think the way I did when I started posting here more seriously, nearly ten years ago. I have been in many places, going through different things and doing many other different things, and I want to take today’s opportunity to talk a little bit about one of the biggest changes in my life: I focus a lot on characters now.
Continue readingThis long rambling originated from a coaching session of the ‘Kintsugi’ method that I attended back in 2020. I did not really care about the branding and identity of the method, but it is true that more often than not I get something of net value out of these activities.
One of the things I acknowledge every time I look back at my trajectory is, I really grew and developed not only by doing a PhD, but by seeking the opportunity to do a PhD. I managed to move quite outside of my environment to do the PhD. I found a really great lab and I had a very good time there. I managed to learn a bunch of things career-wise but it is true that things would have been very different if I had gone there some years later when the financial situation of the lab was very different. One thing that has not changed since then, however, is the imposter syndrome.
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The Ocarina of Time Masterclass in subtext, by GoodBlood, is a brilliant exercise of media review that brings together widely diverse topics including storytelling, Japanese folklore, environmentalism, and even psychology of childhood trauma and adulthood, to analyse the themes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most influential pieces in the medium of video games. This language and these aspects blend together harmoniously to deliver a central message that the game is probably the saddest entry of the Zelda franchise; precisely because of how short we fall to notice, as it is laid out deep within the subtext layers of the writing. The presentation and quality of the theorisation is gorgeous, including the sad notes on shintoism and how its world resonates with the history of Japanese people and their culture. But it is the character analysis, the loss of the hero’s childhood, what makes it a completely unique piece of media analysis -at least for me.
I already “wrote” something about this videoanalysis two years ago – I acknowledged it existence, at least. When I watched it for the first time, it seeded emotions, feelings and ideas that are still very present in me. I recently revisited it and it’s been one of those few times that you relive it almost as if it was the first time. I recommend watching it, even if you are not familiar with the Zelda franchise, for a great example of conveying sub-plots in the context of storytelling. Or you can read it here, as the author made it available in text.
The ramifications of the sadness expand beyond this game into other titles of the franchise. And beyond other topics that could easily fit in another video of this kind. For me, this has ultimately rendered Ocarina of Time unplayable as a mere instance of the Myth of the Hero’s journey. I am not exaggerating if I say that it has completely changed my view of this game and left me in a contemplation of the different depth levels the story speaks to me.
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