Terry Jones

Author Archive

Estimating infectiousness throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection course

Friday, July 16th, 2021 Posted under me. | Comments Off on Estimating infectiousness throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection course

We had a paper in Science go online on May 25, 2021: Estimating infectiousness throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection course. Read more..

The vikings had smallpox

Sunday, April 18th, 2021 Posted under me. | Comments Off on The vikings had smallpox

In July 2020 we published a paper in Science on ancient smallpox viruses: Diverse variola virus (smallpox) strains were widespread in northern Europe in the Viking Age. That was a ... Read more..

Daudin – a Python shell

Sunday, October 13th, 2019 Posted under me, programming, python, tech. | 1 Comment »

A few nights ago I wrote daudin, a command-line shell based on Python. It allows you to easily mix UNIX and Python on the command line. Source code and documentation: https://github.com/terrycojones/daudin. Install ... Read more..

Papers on ancient hepatitis B virus and human parvovirus B19

Sunday, July 15th, 2018 Posted under me. | Comments Off on Papers on ancient hepatitis B virus and human parvovirus B19

We just published two papers. Ancient hepatitis B viruses from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period in Nature, and Ancient human parvovirus B19 in Eurasia reveals its long-term association with ... Read more..

A BLAST puzzle

Friday, August 25th, 2017 Posted under me. | Comments Off on A BLAST puzzle

Re-posted from my internal Cambridge notebook. I have a strange situation. I have two almost identical BLAST databases (20170821 and 20170824). They both contain a certain subject sequence LC074724. I query them ... Read more..

Do stuff on things, in parallel

Saturday, August 5th, 2017 Posted under me. | 2 Comments »

Most people don't really know how to use the tools they spend the most time using: the shell and their editor. It's worth stopping once in a while to teach ... Read more..

Thoughts ahead of the 2017 Transcontinental Race

Tuesday, July 25th, 2017 Posted under me, travel. | Comments Off on Thoughts ahead of the 2017 Transcontinental Race

Last Sunday I did my final training ride before the Transcontinental Race (TCR), which starts in Geraadsbergen (Belgium) at 10pm this Friday night, July 28, 2017. In February 2016 I happened ... Read more..

Everesting

Monday, September 5th, 2016 Posted under me. | 11 Comments »

Yesterday (Sept 3, 2016) I did an Everesting ride on my bike. As a concept, Everesting is dead simple. You pick a hill, any hill, and ride up it enough ... Read more..

Trump After the Inauguration

Monday, June 13th, 2016 Posted under me. | Comments Off on Trump After the Inauguration

Try listening to William S. Burroughs reading his Roosevelt After the Inauguration piece and everywhere you hear "Roosevelt", think "Trump". Burroughs is probably highly NSFW, but Trump is even less suitable ... Read more..

Knog Milkman bike combination lock security flaw

Saturday, June 4th, 2016 Posted under me. | Comments Off on Knog Milkman bike combination lock security flaw

[Note: This issue has been fixed by Knog - see final paragraph.] I have a Knog Milkman combination lock for my bike. It's not supposed to be high security - it ... Read more..

I go shopping for a compass, then my Sonos decides it needs one too

Wednesday, December 10th, 2014 Posted under companies, other, tech. | 1 Comment »

Last night I spent some time online looking to buy a compass. I looked at many of the Suunto models. Also yesterday I installed Little Snitch after noticing that an ... Read more..

Learning jQuery Deferreds published

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014 Posted under deferreds, javascript, me, programming, python, twisted. | Comments Off on Learning jQuery Deferreds published

Nicholas Tollervey and I have written a book, Learning jQuery Deferreds, published by O'Reilly. If you've been a reader of this blog over the years, you may have noticed that I'm ... Read more..

txdlo – a Twisted deferred list observer

Monday, December 30th, 2013 Posted under deferreds, programming, python, twisted. | Comments Off on txdlo – a Twisted deferred list observer

Last night I wrote txdlo, a Python package that provides a class called DeferredListObserver. As you might guess, it lets you observe callback and errback events from a list of ... Read more..

Promises are first-class objects for function calls

Thursday, September 12th, 2013 Posted under deferreds, javascript, programming, python, twisted. | 17 Comments »

Have you ever programmed in a language without functions as first-class objects? You can't return a function from a function, can't pass a function as an argument, and you certainly ... Read more..

The mockery pervading human affairs in all their aspects

Thursday, September 5th, 2013 Posted under books. | Comments Off on The mockery pervading human affairs in all their aspects

From Tacitus, on the eventual rise of Claudius to Roman emperor, from The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics, p127): The more I think about history, ancient or modern, the more ... Read more..

1793 viruses!

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 Posted under me. | 4 Comments »

In case you missed it, I spent ten days in hospital this past May (2013). When they took the skin biopsy from my arm, I got them to take 2 samples. ... Read more..

jQuery-when2 – a more flexible way to work with jQuery deferreds

Saturday, July 27th, 2013 Posted under deferreds, javascript, programming, tech. | Comments Off on jQuery-when2 – a more flexible way to work with jQuery deferreds

I've often been frustrated by the limited functionality of jQuery.when. You give it some deferred objects and it fires when all the deferreds are finished. The trouble is, if any ... Read more..

Yet another cancelable Twisted deferred class

Thursday, June 20th, 2013 Posted under deferreds, python, twisted. | Comments Off on Yet another cancelable Twisted deferred class

I'm posting this (completely untested!) to illustrate how one could write a class to provide a Twisted deferred-like class, identical to the twisted.internet.defer.Deferred class, but which lets you call callback, ... Read more..

Ten days in hospital

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 Posted under me. | 13 Comments »

I'm about to check out of Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge after a 10-day stay, 8 of them in isolation. The short story: I got a rash, and it took over ... Read more..

Daylight robbery: Barclays skims €170 off a 5K EUR -> GBP transfer

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 Posted under companies, me. | 4 Comments »

Last month (on Jan 18, 2013) someone I'm doing some work for initiated a transfer of €5,000 into my UK bank account. According to xe.com the mid-market rate that day ... Read more..