progress

I solved the vector problem a day or two ago. As it turns out, I had the W vector pointing down instead of up, which messed up everything. I tried solving it again for a V vector that is angled up instead of down, but for some reason the example I was working on wouldn't work, even though in theory it was fine. So today I started writing some general utility functions for finding the dot product, cross product, magnitude, etc. As well as defining a structure that I'll use for a type of 3D posn. Then I ran into an interesting problem: in Scheme, you can't just give it two equations and tell it to solve for the variable. But I need to do a fair amount of that. I think I have an idea of how to do it, it just isn't as straight forward as it is on paper. *takes deep breath*

I spent most of the afternoon at the wet lab--three of us went over to see the real T. cruzi parasite. It's really cool looking, but it doesn't just swim nicely, it sits there turning somersaults (confused because there aren't host cells near by) or swims slowly and sporadically (contorting itself quickly yet getting almost no where). Does this critter have any kind of attention span unless host cells are near by? And sometimes tons of them cluster together in this huge flower-like ball. So many questions don't have answers yet, it makes things interesting. I'm glad I didn't see the parasite to start with or I might have given up hope of being able to model it. Life isn't neat like computers are. I'll be glad to stick to spheres for a while...

Oh, and guess what I found on Google news today? Three deadly parasites share common genes: scientists. The genomes of three Trypanosomes, including T. cruzi, were published in Science Magazine today.