Siliceous and Delicious

Worked long and hard today on the first steps of the interface to the RSQLite database. Got the structure and logic of the main menu working, and have a completely working first menu item—”New slide”. “New individual” is next, and more difficult. Spent quite a long time struggling with how to get raster images to plot in R, but eventually figured out a way, using the pixmap package (which needed to be installed). Not fast, not elegant, but it’ll do the job for my purposes.

library(pixmap);

data <- read.pnm(“piccie.pnm”);

plot(data);

As ever with R—it’s three lines of code, and three hours to find it.

I also now need to confront the fact that I don’t really know the taxonomy of the lineages I’m setting out to study. So, in the process of preparing the “here’s what to measure” images for the interface, I’ll not only need to make the mathematical models I’ll use to calculate silica volume, but also assemble the taxonomic literature I’ll need to be familiar with in order to be able to identify the buggers.

A long list, and I’m not as far as I hoped I’d been—but I’m making good progress, and enjoying myself. That said, I’ve spent a full 9-5 day (9-5:23, actually) staring at the computer screen today, and I’m pooped.