I've started my new job as a research assistant at the College of Pharmacy. I'm working for one of the informatics guys here on campus, specifically health informatics. My favorite definition for informatics (I got it here) is "converting data into information".
So, you may be asking, what is it exactly that I get to do? Well, right now I'm putting together a secure web site. It will be for researchers to upload audio files from subjects for processing. I have two Macs to play with, one will be the web server and the other will be the database server.
It is fun to be able to play with some Mac computers. I've stated on several occasions that I would really like to have a Mac for a personal computer. That has been hampered by having other thing I want to spend money on (like food and shelter), and by the fact that some of the programs that I have won't run on a Mac (like my genealogy software).
The other thing that's fun to do is actually do some programming. The site I am putting together is using PHP to deliver the web pages and MySQL as a database. I've now been exposed to Eclipse, which is a free development environment. I'm remembering things like how to normalize a database, use a command-line prompt, and throw an exception.
I've gotten as far as getting the servers secure and the web server to talk to the database. I've got some basic security going (i.e., you need a valid user name and password to get in), but not much further. Now the challenge is to get some functionality with it.
Oh yeah, and keep up in pharmacology.
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