行而尚学

很久没有好好写一篇文字了。电脑上有这么漂亮的字体却不曾用过，实在是浪费。

我的野外工作已经开始。第一趟旅程是北部沿海以及临近的内陆山地。北岸的海水确实很蓝。徜徉在白色的沙滩上，看着西北方向的落日久久不肯沉入地平线，切身感到高纬地区夏日之长。北部的山地确实很险。第一次蜷缩在九十度的悬崖峭壁之下，小心翼翼地背靠在大于六十度的碎石坡上一边采样一边记录，一边担心不留神滑下去，一边担心被上边的石头掉下来砸中。正说话间，我的书包滑下了石坡，翻滚着，蹦跳着，消失在我的视线中。我愣了好一会儿才反应过来，一边喊着my god，一边仰面朝天四肢着地加速向下爬去，追寻我的书包，直到看见它静静地躺在两百米以下稍缓地带上的草丛中。我喊着把包内的相机掏出来，试了试还能拍，终于松了一口气。艾玛同学说了，幸亏翻下来的不是我。

一次又一次的爬山。山不会抱怨被人踩在脚下，我却感到体力被无情地消磨，不像有些人喜欢爬山，只因为山在那儿。“仁者乐山，智者乐水”。大概乐山者多信奉儒家精神，以进取的心态面对一切，所以见高而登。而乐水者多秉持道家宗旨，以遁世的姿态看待人生，所以临渊羡水。其实真正的仁者是山，不是踩在它上面的人。而真正的智者是水，水能降万物，乐水者虽欲效颦而终究不得要领。我自命为乐水者，此时不喜攀登而不得不勉力为之，只能以锻炼身体自我安慰。

最坚刚的还是绵羊。在这人迹罕至的山坡上，它不但健步如飞，而且还跳腾扑跃，仿佛故意要把人类羞辱一番。不过还是要感谢绵羊。日复一日，它们用嘴啃短了草丛，让我们可以看清植被下面的山石；它们用脚踩出了一条条羊道，让我们有径可循。

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回家没休息两天，第二趟旅程又开始了，这次是到南部。算算最近一个月，出门的日子比在家的时间还长，与爱人也是聚少离多，竟然生出几分愁绪。坐在艾玛的小红车里，望着天上的白云匆匆赶路一般，想着自己离家越来越远，心情持续低落。好在这次任务比较少，相对轻松，否则我很难以这样的情绪投入高强度的工作。

忘了带相机是一大遗憾。南部的风景确实有所不同，但却又难以言表。这边的山似乎更毛糙一些，不似北部的山那样规整。这边的海水是绿色的，不像北岸的海水那样纯蓝。各色各样的花似乎种类更多些，色调也更加热烈。

进入西南近海的山区，沿途看见几处淡水湖泊藏于山间，其上岛屿零星，草木茂盛，竟有几分中国山水画才有的意境。我想用“世外桃源”这个词来形容此间天地，却不知道用英文怎么表达。后来查到“Arcadia”这个词，意思看来是正确的，但这个源自希腊的单词，又怎么能表达出汉字之间的那份韵味。有时候文学翻译，如某位前辈所说，就像面对着一幅水墨画，却要临摹出一张油画来。看似闲散飘逸的水墨画，其背后隐略的寓意，是看着油画长大的人难以理解的。纵观全陆，各处大大小小的乡村，哪里不是桃源，却并非世外。中国的古人心系民生疾苦，却厌倦了世间炎凉百态，才对“世外”两个字心向往之。若入世之人无需呕血沥胆为民请命，世人又何必出世以图逍遥、避污浊？

The 10-day training is going to its end, when I feel so lost.

It seems I indeed belong to this realm: my bachelor's, my master's and now my PhD's work all fell or will fall in this field. Many of those in this course have their projects similar to my former works or to my former colleagues' works. I can talk a lot with them because I know quite something about their works, but I can't utter any word on this fact...

But really, I am so bored when they are talking how they made efforts trying to make their PCRs and softwares work or how difficult it was to find a snail on a cliff. And I am always fainting when they give something made by GIS showing plots where their lovely grasses or frogs are located on the surface of this globe. If I could choose, I would rather listen to a story about a name of  Karajan.

Yes I was interested in population genetics, biogeography and evolution, and now I am still a bit interested in this field, but not in such trivia. We are always using imperfect methods to produce a mass of may-not-be-true data, which are not needed by anyone but ourselves. This may not be anything wrong for pure science. However, while our data end up being published without giving any enlightenment to others nor do they provide any evaluation to theories, how can we still call ourselves scientists?

I still have a lot to do to fight my way.

I found that R is a vital software not only if I want an alternative to SPSS but also when I want to be more professional in genomic analysis, so I tried to install it under my ubuntu.

After a search on internet I found this guidance very useful: (http://cchien.pixnet.net/blog/post/22232597). There is only one mistake in it, that is, I have to install the R commander by inputting [ install.packages("Rcmdr", dependencies=TRUE)] within R environment, not under linux terminal.

Then another problem occurred. Each time I opened the R commander, it will install a package "car" once again. The reason is that another package called "rgl" can not be installed each time "car" is installed.

I found in the codes "X11 not found but required" for rgl installation. I searched online and get the answer: [sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rgl]. This is indeed the ultimate solution and it succeeded at last (thanks to Duncan, Ben, Megha and Matthieu from Nabble forum), but when I tried this yesterday, it returned "package can not be found".

At last I found the answer in the official R website: for "secure apt", you must get the key for ubuntu set right, by doing [gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key E2A11821] and [gpg -a --export E2A11821 | sudo apt-key add -]. I input them under the terminal, added the cran mirror in my software source list, then tried [sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rgl]. It worked this time. Then I opened R commander again. After being asked to install "car" once more, I got everything OK. Now I can run R with no problem.

Last week I decided to learn Linux, so I upgraded my old laptop, and installed Ubuntu 8.10 as a virtual system under Virtualbox on my portable hard disk (just 30G). I assigned a flexible space with the maximum of 15G for the ubuntu, and it finally occupied only less than 4G after updated to the latest version.

Everything looks well now, and I am going to learn how to use vim under linux. But at first, I want to get familiar with the operating system. I hope I can use openoffice for doc, exe and ppt documents, and have musics, movies, pdfs, msn and endnote (essential for academics) under linux. Some of them are still problems, which may not be solved by myself, so I can just wait until someone else comes up to any solution. No such problems at present for recording.

Only one thing, I find it's easy to use O2 wireless network in my virtual ubuntu, although O2 ireland hasn't developed any solution for linux. Ubuntu 8.10 gives a solution for O2 or Vodafone wireless networks. But the function is not stable. Ideally, I will allocate the usb Huawei E220 to the ubuntu in virtualbox, then ubuntu will identify the usb modem and automatically get online. The only thing I need to do is to fill the PIN of O2 in the network configuration. But sometimes it asks me for something like a password to unlock a module or for the E220 modem, and then the network can not get connected. And in some other cases the wireless network just get disconneted. I tried to study the reason and to find answer through internet by I got noting helpful.

I don't know if I should ask the virtualbox or the ubuntu workgroup for the question. But one thing should be told to ubuntu, i. e. I can not change the settings in the wireless network interface. Each time I make a change (tick up or off the box before "pap" or "chap"), it will return to the default next time. This can be solved next time they make an update.

Well. That's all this time. I will go on to enjoy and tolerate my ubuntu life.

为了明天的实验课，今天重温了一下关于种子结构的知识，发现两处中英文翻译的常见错误：

在种子的结构中，子叶、胚根、胚芽属于胚的三个部分，分别翻译为cotyledon，radicle，plumule。

在中文词典中，常常将胚根错译为“radicel”，将胚芽错译为“plantule”。其实这两者各有本意：

radicel：A small brach of a root; a rootlet. （来自biology online）意为小根，支根。可能是两个单词拼写相近，所以被搞错了。

plantule：根据wiki百科，为法语单词，同英语的“seedling”。另，从the free dictionary网站上查到这一单词的意思为：The embryo which has begun its development in the act of germination。确实应指刚刚开始萌发的整个胚结构，而不是与“胚根”相对应的“胚芽”。