Google Spreadsheet Connected to a Custom Google Map

I hacked together some cool javascript code that takes a world editable Google spreadsheet that contains names and longitudes and latitudes and puts them on a map. It is a really cool and simple way to allow people to add themselves to a map.

Here is the example: http://www.the-iliad.org/map.html

Here is the source: http://pastebin.com/LPVb5NPy

I am sure if you wanted to make it more complicated you could make it so people didn't even need to goto the Google spreadsheet and could just enter the information in a text box on the webpage and click a button. You can put the map in an iframe to do that.

This code probably has other cool applications.

Being Alone

It is really interesting moving to a new place and not really knowing anyone. You have so much time to do stuff. I want to say it is nice but I don't know if I would be lying or not? I don't enjoy people. This is not to say that I don't need company or companionship but I do enjoy my own company. I find myself to be very interesting and thought provoking, hahaha. I also have really good taste in music and movies and I know the funniest jokes. But I guess if this is not true for everyone then maybe something is not correct?

I have accomplished a ton since I have been here. Being without internet and sitting in a mostly bare apartment gives one lots of free time. I am not one of those people who likes to explore or sight-see either. Mostly I just like to explore my mind. I submitted a grant to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or LACMA to create a human/bacterial communicator. I requested $30k haha. It was fun to write.

I am finally finishing up my paper on language analysis and hope to put it up on arXiv soon! YAY! I have been working on that paper for years. Maybe since 2011. If anyone wants to help me proofread or tell me if it makes sense I would be glad to send a copy.

Today I hope to code a little and work on my XSEDE proposal which was creating a correlation matrix analysis tool for determining groups in hydrogen bond dynamics over the course of a molecular dynamics simulation.

I also started experimenting in the lab. Well.. creating competent cells, hah. YAY!

I have also been filming a personal documentary about moving here and about Science. I want to include other people. The goal is to give people insight into what it is actually like working as a Scientist. Probably just post it on youtube in a year after I finish all the filming and editing. Just for fun. If you have a decent camera and want to film yourself let me know and maybe we can collaborate!

I finally have a bike! I can now ride to work everyday. It is only like a 1 mile bike ride and is mostly relaxing. The bike lanes are on the outside and I need to figure out how not to be hit when people are turning right and not signalling. hah.

I really enjoy my new apartment even though it is not that large there is plenty of room for myself and I have already planned out how I am going to set it up. I just need to figure out how to obtain all the stuff I need. I just have one question do I need more than a quad monitor setup?

I will be super excited once my workstation and stuff arrives from Chicago! Then I can build stuff and hack stuff and have a good old time. I miss my soldering iron!

Life in California

What!
I just arrived in California and it has been a crazy week!
I am currently living on the NASA/Navy base in the lodging they have. It is pretty decent. I have a microwave and a fridge and it is pretty quiet(It is the off season as most of the visitors come in the summer). Looking for a place has not been as bad as I expected just not as easy as in Chicago. In Chicago you go around to a few places and have a credit check for the one you want and then move in. Here everyone just goes out and puts in like 20 applications and then based on which ones are not taken by other people they choose from the ones they are approved from. So for every place you are usually hoping the people before you don't want it and you are quicker than the people after you.

So I found a place. It is a 500 square foot studio for ~$1400/month. It has about a 60 square foot covered private patio which adds to the place but it is pretty ridiculous in price. You can rent a pretty swanky apartment in Chicago for $1400, at least on the south side. It is actually one of the nicest/largest/cheapest that I found.

NASA is super cool. Everyone is so laid back. It really is so much different from any University environment I have been in. There is no pressure from anyone. Not that I plan to be lazy I plan to work really hard but I want to do it on my owns terms. If I want to be lazy for a day and not do much I don't want to be hassled by a PI. Not that the PIs I have hassle much but they act like your boss instead of your colleague and they usually think your only job is to produce results for them.

California is much more relaxed than Chicago. Though most people in Chicago are pretty nice and relaxed(at least when not driving). I think the weather here has the effect of making people more laid back. I really enjoy it here and I am excited to be more settled and less stressed out. Because travelling staying in hotels, crappy food, stress have all taken a toll on me. I completely forgot how hard moving is. Hopefully it will be a bit until I move again.

The ILIAD Project

Graduate School in Sciences can be really hard. Sometimes ones work feels really insignificant. I often felt this way while doing my Ph.D. Especially after my first paper was summarily crushed after revisions by a journal. I thought what can I do in Science if other Scientists don't even appreciate my work? Who can I help? Then I started to think about how insignificant I was(which can be a good thing). I started to think what is better than one Josiah doing research? Maybe 10 Josiahs or 100s or even 1000s. Then the questions came how can I inspire thousands of people to do Open research towards a Scientific goal?

I grew up in the Open Source Movement. I wrote the program IP Sorcery, a packet generator for Linux, thousands of lines of code. I have always tried to make my code available online, even funny or stupid or crappy code I write. You never know who will find it useful? Open Source changed my life. Having code to dig through and learn from. Being able to hack on code that already had a good base took out much of busy work and allowed me to dive in. I think Open Source Software changed not only my life but the world. I am writing this from Linux, using Chrome, and my email is open in Thunderbird and my cell phone runs android, all Open Source softwares. This is pretty amazing!

I think we are entering the age of the carbon atom, the organic molecule and leaving the age of silicon. I think this age will be dominated by DIYers like Linus Torvalds(The inventor of Linux) they just need the resources and direction to make this happen.

Things like FoldIt and Zooniverse and many others have started to change the way Science is done. BUT they are not Science. They are games that people play to help out Scientists. What if instead we could involve people in Science so that they learn from their involvement. So not only are they helping create Scientific Knowledge but they are also turning them selves into Scientists at the same time!

This is where The ILIAD project was born. A simple idea that would solve a problem. Instead of small numbers of people searching for antibiotics in organisms, take large numbers of people in different locations and have them test and use their intelligence and intuition to find them.

Did you know that Red Sage was a Traditional Chinese Medicine? Did you know that someone tested it's extract for antibiotic activity and now it is under development as an antibiotic? What else is out there? What knowledge do local people have on plants and insects that outsiders might not? What if everything on the planet could be tested and made Open and Accessible to anyone?

I love doing Science so much and I will never stop doing Science. I think though that I should also spend time inspiring others to learn and perform Science. One day I will be dead and my skills and creativity will be gone unless I train and show others how to do things. I want to see Science Fiction become Science Reality and that starts by involving the whole world and not just people in academia or in industry or people of privilege.

I have been working on The ILIAD project for over 6 months and have invested close to $1000 which is alot for someone who was making the NIH minimum postdoc salary of $39,000/Year. I believe in this project but I don't want it to succeed for it's own sake. I would gladly watch this project go under if it meant that some other project could take its place and involve thousands or millions of people across the world in Science.

I just want see and do beautiful things and I hope others do also.

The ILIAD Project Indiegogo campaign is here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-identify-new-antibiotics-at-home-with-the-iliad-project/x/4544718

NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship

I recently found out that I received a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship to study In Situ resource utilization for space exploration and colonization.

This is pretty awesome, I wrote a proposal back in June after meeting Masood Hadi at a Synthetic Biology conference. He encouraged me to submit. I will be working with him at Ames in Mountain View, CA.

My proposal will focus on developing a novel 3D printing technology using bacteria, light and soil (Proposal Here).

I am actually really surprised to have received this Fellowship and super excited to begin working at NASA.

As always I have a bunch of projects that I have been working on and hope to post more stuff on those soon but for the next month or two I might be busy arranging my move to CA.

Molecular Dynamics Sonification and Music Hack Day Chicago

I went to Music Hack Day Chicago this weekend (http://chicago.musichackday.org/index.php?page=Main+page). It was the first time I ever went to a Hackathon but was looking forward to spending 30-40 hours coding out something cool. Of course these hacks were supposed to have something to do with music and I decided upon programming a mechanism to sonify data from Molecular Dynamics simulations.

I recently received a grant from the national supercomputing center for computer time on Stampede at UTexas, currently ranked the sixth fastest super computer in the world (http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/). I have been running some equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of proteins to understand conformational change pathways and basically figure out how proteins work the way they do. The amount data from these simulations is huge and complex and it is very multi-dimensional because not only are you looking at how each atom in the protein is moving in 3-dimensions but you are also looking at the physical forces that control this.

Normally one uses a variety of analysis software and also watches the simulations to try and observe obvious changes. As you can imagine simultaneously trying to understand any portion of this data is a crazy task visually so I set out to to use more senses. I wanted to sonify the data and play it back while watching the visual part of the simulation. Harnessing our auditory ability to pick out unique sounds.

So I created a layered musical arrangement that allows someone to listen for more subtle conformational changes while watching video of the simulation. This is different then most any other form of data sonification that I have found because it uses easily recognizable musical instruments whereas most data sonification just uses frequency shifted sine waves.

It surprisingly work really well and is really cool to experience. Code for demoing it is available here (https://drive.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0#folders/0B_R75gIJvkFUT0xveDlEaXZzQm8)


The sounds that one can hear in the video:

The piano key in the beginning represents the radius of gyration of the protein as it becomes higher in pitch the radius of gyration is becoming larger, as it becomes lower the radius of gyration is smaller. The radius of gyration is a measure of movement away from a center of mass, so basically if the protein is expanding or shrinking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radius_of_gyration)

The beeps represent the RMSD of each residue as compared to frame 1 of the simulation. As the RMSD from the starting structure become higher the pitch becomes higher. Each beep is for each residue and they are performed in order. RMSD is basically how far each residue moved from it's initial position in relation to the protein(i.e. minus translation motion) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root-mean-square_deviation_of_atomic_positions)

To determine where a residue is located listen for secondary structure cues.

The percentage secondary structure as calculated by dssp is the background sounds.
This is an explaination of secondary structure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_secondary_structure)

A violin is played for the first quarter of the protein and represents the amount of structure in the whole protein, a combination of alpha helix, beta sheet and turn. It becomes higher in pitch as the number goes up and lower as it goes down.
The second quarter of the protein's background sound is Monks making an ohhh noise(according to MIDI tables) it is a representative of the percentage alpha helix. It becomes higher in pitch as the number goes up and lower as it goes down.
For the third quarter of the protein the background sound is a guitar it is a representative of the percentage beta sheet. It becomes higher in pitch as the number goes up and lower as it goes down.
The final quarter is a Sci-Fi noise (called so by MIDI tables), it represents percentage coil. It becomes higher in pitch as the number goes up and lower as it goes down.
So for instance if you hear a group of high pitch beeps during the violin you know they are in the first quarter of the protein.

The protein is HIV protease is a dimer(i.e. composed of two of the same protein). This means the sonification of the first half will be one half and the second half will be the other. Being a dimer doesn't mean that the conformational changes are symmetric either so the two halves can sound different.

Listen to the sounds a see if you can identify where in the protein the conformational changes are occurring. 

What one can tell is that the high pitched beeps are in the beginning and end also the middle of each half.The beginning and end of proteins, the termini are often very flexible and so change alot but are often not related to protein function. However, the high beeps in the middle(residues 40-60) are the flaps of the HIV protease that open up to allow substrate binding and cleavage and allow the virus to be active. It is pretty cool that this works!

Scientific American

So this week has been crazy. Two articles were published online that were widely read and accessed based on the Chromochord. One in Scientific American by Nona Griffin that Karen Ingram did some cool artwork for!

The other was by the awesome Katie Drummond at The Verge . She was super cool and so much fun to do the article with. 

I will be honest. All the the attention was fun. It was cool to interact with new people and I even was able to interact with Zoe Keating (http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/60374925385/the-worlds-smallest-violin-scientist-uses-proteins-to) my favorite musician! She wants to do a duet with me! hah. If only I could actually play good music on The Chromochord.

I think my main goal from the press was to try and leverage it in some way to acquire more press and to make connections that I can use now or in the future. Partly to try and fund this Indiegogo Campaign I have been working on with Francisco Castillo Trigueros the composer. I probably emailed every major news organization but no one picked it up . It was fun while it lasted but now I need to continue moving forward. My 5 minutes of press are up.

I do think it was good though. It was inspiring. Inspired me to fix some software bugs in the Chromochord. Inspired me to work on new projects and Inspired me to keep doing what I am doing because it really is a productive path. I am excited to see how far my mind can take me! Just need to keep thinking of new ideas and how to implement and keep working to implement them.

Is Being a Scientist Cool?

Sorry, Roger Tsien, you're my boy but you look like a huge nerd.

You walk into most academic institutions and go and meet the Scientists and they look like huge nerds. Now there is nothing wrong with looking like a huge nerd. People should feel like they can be themselves and people should not be judge by what they wear and how they look. Let's be honest here though if you met these people would they inspire you to be a Scientist?

What do people aspire to? Well obviously positions in which they will make lots of money but besides that people aspire to things that look cool and sound cool despite what the actual work consists of. Why do so many people want to work for all the Facespaces and Googles? Sure, there is pay and benefits and such but I am sure a job at Yahoo or Zipcar pays similarly. It is because of status.

In the late 90s and early 2000s I worked at Motorola as an engineer and programmer for the iDEN cell phone network. I wasn't paid an overly large sum of money about $30k but I wouldn't have left there if some company came and offered me $50k to do web development. I didn't want to do anything but work for Motorola. My cool ID badge and RSA secureID card and access to cell phone systems. For a technology nerd I was living the dream. A job with a really famous technology company giving me access to important data and control over cell phone networks. It was awesome.

So why would people rather work for Facespace with their job description revolve around trying to make people click ads rather than work in academic Science and Technology doing something so much "cooler".

Why isn't being a Scientist cool? I mean, being an Astronaut is barely cool these days. A couple thousand applicants for the last Astronaut application cycle? Survivor receives more applications than that!

Iron Man the movie has started to bring some coolness back into Science and Technology. The other day I was at the Grocery store and I heard a kid say that he wanted to be Iron Man. Hopefully because he wanted to invent cool things and not just because he wanted to beat people up but you take what you can get.

I dare you to show me a picture of a Scientist that would make someone in high school or younger think "Wow, that person is cool I really want to be like him or her". Why do we pay footballers and rap stars so much money? Because everyone wants to be them. They look cool, they act cool and they live what seems like a fun life. Their tweets are entertaining and funny, they are enjoyable people.

Is it just the life of the Scientist to be absorbed so much in their work and their head that they don't really care how they are perceived by other people?

I mean everyone loves people like Neil deGrasse Tyson but does anybody really aspire to be him and wear a suit everyday and act pretentious?

Is it our job as Scientists to make Science cool, Accessible, and seem like it is a fun job?

I don't know.

I am in no way endorsing that I am cool and other Scientists are not at least not outright but why do most of us seem so boring? TV shows and movies portray Scientists as ugly and nerdy and boring. Well except Iron Man. Are they portraying Scientists the wrong way or is that the way we all really look and act?

Figure 5.1: Warner Brothers == Lame

So what you are about to read is completely true I swear.

Somehow in writing my thesis I decided to insert a meme

At first it was just a placeholder for a real figure but then as time went on and I became less and less motivated to change it and I left it in. It's funny and it's Boromir. Why can't he be in my thesis? I sent off the thesis to my committee and I guess they didn't mind(or didn't read the last page) so it stayed in. Well when I was going to submit it to the school I had questions about image rights. Are the copyright to memes owned by the company that made the movie that the image came from? Mostly, from what I could find, No. The image because it is significantly changed becomes a new work of art. Anyways, I thought it would be a chance for Warner Brothers to be all cool and be like "Yeah, it would be sweet if you used Boromir in your thesis!" So I went and found that New Line Cinema/Warner Brothers is the company that made Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The movie where the image came from. So I found out an email address that is used for licensing and sent them this email:

--------------------------------
Hey Julie or Clip and Still Dept.,
     My name is Dr. Josiah Zayner. I just recently finished my work to graduate from the University of Chicago with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. In my thesis I have created a Figure that contains the Bormir "One Does Not Simply" still (inserted in this email and attached) from the movie The Fellowship of the Ring by New Line Cinema. Also, attached is my Thesis, this is Figure 5.1.
  <image>
I was wondering if it was possible for me to us this image in my thesis published online. Because I just graduated I am poor and have no money to offer but I promise I will let everyone know the kindness of Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema in return.
Thanks,
     Josiah Zayner Ph.D.
 --------------------------------

Well, yesterday they finally replied with the answer being NO. I laughed. It was kind of a joke to begin with but I never imagined how me using the image in my thesis could end up being bad? How would they lose anything by saying yes? It is strange that companies still exist in a world that using a still that I have every right to use, through original content and fair use laws, they still say I can't use it. Good thing The Hobbit was such a bad movie because now I am definitely not going to see the new one when it comes out.

The world is changing but so many companies and people don't want to change with it. Sure, you need to protect your ass but from who? A Ph.D. Scientist?

Dr. Zayner and Other Stuff

So I defended my thesis which I am glad is finally over! It was really nice to be able to share my Science everyone. I have so many friends and we rarely talk about what we actually do because we usually spend 8-12 hours a day doing Science and talking with co-workers about it. It was really nice to be able to show my love for Science to people.

It is also fun to be a Ph.D. I have only been one for a few days but whenever I start to feel down I always just remind myself that I have a Ph.D. and it can't ever be taken away. I know lame right? But I still have a kick out of it.

I am still waiting to hear back from my NASA fellowship and have a Skype interview with Ed Boyden next week but otherwise not much going on.  I am really interested to see stuff Ed has to say, hear what he is interested in.

I am working on two cool projects at the moment. One is developing the Chromochord into a new sound sensitive instrument. We have talked to some people at the business school and plan on doing a Kickstarter or some such thing to raise some money for it. I will post on here when that goes down.

I just need to find a job now.

I also did an interview with Nona Griffin that will be published online hopefully soon. I will post when it is up. She was really great. If you have a great Science project that you are working on I encourage you to look her up online and email her.

Solidoodle 3 Beginner's Tutorial

Here I will provide a Solidoodle Getting started Guide this is done with Linux but most of the stuff should transfer over to Windows:

Things you should do after opening your Solidoodle 3

1. Install Software & Test Printing
2. Calibrate Filament Feed
3. Calibrate Temperature on Extruder
4. Level Bed
5. Tape the Bed

1. Installing Software & Test Printing

The software I use on Linux is Slic3r in repetierhost and pronterface.

RepetierHost is what I use for visualization/centering/slicing it seems to do much better than the pronterface/skeinforge package. It can be found at http://www.repetier.com/download/

Pronterface is from the PrintRun software package at https://github.com/kliment/Printrun . It is built off of python so make sure you have python installed (sudo apt-get install python).

Goto Thingiverse and pick something really simple to print
http://www.thingiverse.com/newest/page:1

Download the stl file and load it up in repetierHost
If it doesn't look like below the object in 3D there is something wrong with the file so you should try another. Or you can run the file through the netfabb service that automatically repairs stl files (http://cloud.netfabb.com/)

So the Slic3r config files provided by Solidoodle are for version 2, hah! So we need to update those for use. Basically we just need to change the bed size to 205, 200 and the print center to 102.5, 100.
You can download mine here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_R75gIJvkFUR0pfVk5NMnBmQUE/edit?usp=sharing

Open up the Slicer tab in repetierHost and click on the first configure button.
Then in Slic3r click on "File" then "Load Config"
Remember that anytime you change anything in the Slic3r config, like adding an extrusion multiplier or something. You need to save those changes in the config before you close the Slic3r window or they won't take effect in your print.

Now we are ready to slice so click on "Slice with Slic3r"

This should eventually output a g-code file and bring you to the "g-code editor" tab click on the save icon and save this g-code file for use with pronterface.

Open up pronterface and connect to your printer and click on the "Monitor printer" box.
Turn on your bed and heater(extruder heater) and let them warm up.
Load your g-code file from Slic3r.

Before you click on print make sure the filament is in and extruding properly. Keep clicking on extrude till something comes out.

Click "Print" and sit back for a few hours.

2. Calibrate Filament feed
This is fun and easy what you need to do is plug-in your printers USB cable to your computer and open up pronterface and connect to the printer. Heat-up your extruder to 190C or so. Remove all filament from the extruder by backing it out and blow out any filament dust. Sometimes this causes extruding problems. Reinsert filament until it starts coming out of the extruder.

Now take a ruler and measure 100 mm (use 100 mm because small errors will add up and be visible) of filament say from the top of the extruder and mark this point with a sharpie or marker. Type in 100 mm in the extrude box and click extrude. Now measure how much is left if the mark is not almost exactly near the top of the extruder.

We need to calculate the extruder multiplier. The extruder is set to extrude at an arbitrary extrudeness of 1 extrude multiplier. If however 1 extrude multiplier is greater than what is actually needed we need to increase of decrease this value. If your Solidoodle extrudes less than what you want i.e. You want 100 mm and it extrudes 90 we need to change the extrude multiplier. We calculate it like so:

(Amount we want it to extrude) / (Amount actually extruded)

So in the above case: 100 mm / 90 mm = 1.11

This extrude multiplier we enter into our Slic3r config in repetierHost under the "Filament Settings" tab.

3. Calibrate Temperature on Extruder
Open up pronterface. In the bottom right corner there should be a command entry text box and a "Send" button.

Enter and press Send:
M303 S200 C5

This  should run an automated temperature calibration process that when finished should output 3 values: Kp, Ki and Kd.

Write these down.
Send the command(where X equals the value of Kp, Y equals Ki and Z equals Kd) :
M301 PXXX IYYY DZZZ

We need to permanently save these values by sending the command:
M500


4. Level the bed
Purchase a small level if you don't have one and place it on the bed in the middle. There are three screws on the Solidoodle bed that can be rotated to change the pitch and height of the bed. They are very sensitive. Make sure you rotate the level 90 degrees and place it in multiple places on the bed to have the best levelling.

After you level your nozzle might be raised or lowered a bit. There is a screw in the on the back wall of the Solidoodle pointing down that looks like it is not doing anything. It is in fact a stop for the bed. The bed height is what controls the height not the nozzle.

If after leveling your bed you feel you changed the height significantly adjust the screw at the back. There are lots of techniques people suggest to try and find the proper 0.1mm height. Some say place a piece of paper underneath the nozzle on the bed and move the nozzle if it drags the paper it is too low. I suggest just printing the bottom layer of something. And optimizing it so you have the smallest layer that is not see through. 3D printing is much trial and error. If you print to thick of layers the nozzle will catch on the object and knock it out of place or deform it. Practice printing by printing something easy and once everything is tuned nice go onto something bigger.

5. Tape the Bed
Nothing sticks to the kapton bed and this can be quite annoying for a beginner as it was for me. Solidoodle say everything sticks but they are wrong. One reason stuff does not stick and warps is because of temperature. The bed does not reach the temperatures that Solidoodle says it does because it is exposed. I wrapped my Solidoodle in aluminum foil.

This allows the bed temperature to become 5 or 10 degrees warmer but it still only helps a little. What you need to do is cover the bed in painter's tape or masking tape such as http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-7835/3M-Masking-Tape/3M-233-High-Temperature-Masking-Tape-2-x-60-yards?pricode=WU325&gadtype=pla&id=34609809682&gclid=CM7wxd_-lbgCFa7m7AodOh0ACw&gclsrc=aw.ds

It becomes alot harder to remove things from the bed(the tape can actually help though by using it to help remove the printed product) but everything actually sticks!

A Cheap Simple DIY Electrophoresis Power Supply

As most people trying to run Gel Electrophoresis in their apartment know generating greater than 100V of DC so you can run your gel in a reasonable amount of time can be expensive. Most of these power supplies can run in the >$100 even for ones that are 30 years old. I started messing around with some stuff and came up with a way to build a "power supply" that can output > 100V DC for less than $5.

All our outlets in North America output ~120V AC. Using this for most applications is not plausible because AC is not continuous current. What we usually want for most electronics and gel electrophoresis is DC. People have tried AC with gel electrophoresis and it just screws up the mobility because of the wave constantly changing sign. The beauty of the system here is that is uses AC just rectified. So you still can output >100V.

Full-Wave rectification converts an AC into a oscillating DC. This removes the negative portion of the AC and makes a perfect electrophoresis power supply because we don't care if our DC current oscillates.

What I used :
Small prototyping breadboard
which can be purchased off of eBay for at like 10 for $2
A 200V bridge rectifier. $0.29
Remember 120V is RMS voltage for AC so it can reach up much higher. Go with at least 200V. I choose 1A to keep gel heating down. If you are in Europe you need a much higher rectifier.
http://www.jameco.com/1/1/1073-df02m-diode-bridge-rectifier-1a-200v-dip-4.html
A power cord
If you don't have one laying around here is one for $2.25
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_340072_-1
Banana jack if you need/want them.
Use shrouded banana jacks so you don't shock yourself or burn down your house.


DISCLAIMER: you are going to be working with AC mains voltage. If you don't know how to work with this safely please don't do this.
This is simple. Connect with solder the positive and negative wires/banana jacks to the pins marked + and - on the bridge rectifier diode. Then connect the white and black wires of the power cord to one each of the other pins on the diode(it doesn't matter which ones you connect them to) they should be labeled with a ~. I soldered the green wire off by itself as a "ground"!

Make sure all the components are covered before you plug it in to prevent spectacular shorts and electrocution. I used duct tape for the tests because I am cheap and simple. A good idea for an enclosure would be an old pipette tip box with holes cut in the sides. 

Putting a 250V 250mA or so fuse in the circuit is a good idea to protect yourself.

I also have another connector in between the bridge rectifier and the banana jacks for my home built electrophoresis setup. So ignore the black and green connectors.

That's it.
Plug in your positive(red) plug to the red banana jack and the negative(black) plug to the negative banana jack of your gel box and plug your power supply into the outlet. Plugging and unplugging the jacks is best done while disconnected from AC mains to prevent any accidentally shocks.

The short circuit reading from my multimeter is 108V. Obviously in Europe with 240V AC your voltage is going to be >200V. You can step this down using a voltage divider in the output of your circuit.

Here is the test. I ran a 1% agarose gel in TAE. What I ran is DNA ladder(lane 1) a plasmid(lane 3) and some ~75bp primers(lane 5 hard to see) at 100V for 20 minutes using a Fischer brand power supply from our lab.

~100V for 20 minutes using Fischer Power Supply

I did the same test with my rectified supply.

As you can see the images are almost identical.

And here it after 37 minutes:

Any questions feel free to ask.

NASA

Still really busy. Been spending most of my time writing my Ph.D. thesis.
One thing I have noticed is that when one start to become closer to graduating people tend to treat you differently or maybe I just started acting differently and people responded in kind? It is a good kind of different not a bad kind. People seem to listen more to my thoughts and ideas. It is pretty cool. I am starting to more and more feel like someone who is not crazy. I am starting to feel like I have good ideas and not just lame ideas.

Anyways, on to NASA.
I was recently at the Gordon Conference on Synthetic Biology. If you have never been to a Gordon Conference and have $1200 to spare you should apply(not everyone can go they only take ~150 people). It was a great time met lots of great people including George Church and Drew Endy. Drew is probably the most laid back scientist I have ever met. I met Masood Hadi a Synthetic Biologist who is at NASA and he encouraged me to apply for the NASA Postdoctoral fellowship program. So I have been working on that also. I would goto work with him at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA next to Google headquarters and Stanford. That would be super awesome. We would work on developing sustainable technologies for space travel using synthetic biology such as engineering bacteria to produce chemicals or food or whatever is needed.

On the side I have been spending lots of time attempting to create an integrated lab environment using Arduinos, Linux and a webpage. So one can view the status of and change the function of any lab instrument integrated in the environment. So far I have I made it so that one can communicate to an Arduino attached to a computer through a webpage. I have started building a PCR machine and a heated incubator/shaker and a power supply and gel electrophoresis setup. All controlled using Arduino all are in various stages of disrepair but I nothing I am building is entirely new so I know it can be done and will be done I just need time. I will probably work on it this weekend along with my NASA proposal.

I have posts I am working on that should be done sometime in the next week/month/year, who knows?