Those of you who have been long time subscribers (both of you), will notice a number of changes to this site. In particular, I have changed the name of the site from [[leeFalin alloc] init] (a cocoa programming reference) to Non-Coding region (a bioinformatics reference).

This is to reflect the fact that in January I started attending graduate school full time in Virginia Tech’s GBCB program. (Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology). In order to clear up any concern about the future content of this blog, and in particular my long term plans for Polarian and Screen Mimic, I have put together the following FAQ:

1. Are you getting out of Macintosh programming?

No, I am still working hard developing Cocoa apps.

2. Then do you plan to continue working on Screen Mimic?

Yes! I am still working hard on Screen Mimic 2.0 (the much awaited release that will include audio support).

3. So why bioinformatics?

Some time ago, I was reading What Color Is Your Parachute? trying to figure out what to do with my life. In the book there is a test (called the flower diagram) that helps you to identify what areas you are most interested in. The nice thing is that it doesn’t tell you what you should do, just helps you to firmly define your interests. The goal is that you try to decide what to do that would match those interests. Bioinformatics was the place where all of my interests overlapped.

4. So what other changes to this site will there be?

Since I’m working in a research lab, I’ve noticed that most people there keep lab notebooks, recording their daily activities, I thought I would incorporate this into the blog. I’m also doing a lot of work with open source technology that I would like to write about, so the blog will be divided into four parts:
1. Polarian (Polarian news product information)
2. Bioinformatics (Information in general about bioinformatics, and the GBCB program at Virginia Tech)
3. Programming (All general programming topics Cocoa, perl, php, etc)
4. General (mostly rubbish)

5. Where does the blog name come from?

One of the commonly held beliefs in biology is that there are two different types of DNA regions. Coding and Non-Coding. Coding DNA is responsible for specifying the amino acid sequences that generate proteins. Most Non-coding DNA is not thought to do anything and is commonly called “Junk DNA”, so I thought it was a fitting title for a blog. (at least my blog).