Welcome to randombio.com

What's here

T his is the official website of imal (Image Measurement and Analysis Lab), a sophisticated and powerful open-source image analysis and densitometry software package for Linux, Unix, OS X and similar operating systems. The on-line manual provides detailed instructions for installing and using imal. Imal (along with the C++ source code) is freely available and is distributed under the GPL. Please let us know if you have any problems with the software.

We also have a large collection of pages on various problems that we've had over the years with Linux, along with their solutions. Our Book Reviews section has over 275 reviews of books on a wide variety of topics, including the biological sciences, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, language, law, computers, radar and communications, politics, history, philosophy, and the military.

The Commentary section has a number of examples of science humor, as well as more serious articles on current events and other topics. A few of these articles are on controversial subjects. Some readers may disagree with me; if you have a strong opinion on some topic, feel free to let me know what you think. (If your comment is particularly insightful, I may even post it.)

Comments have been discontinued. If you send a comment by email, please indicate whether you object to having it posted below the article, and if not, whether you want your name withheld. In some cases (as in the CO2 page), your comment may be discussed within the article instead of appended.

Finally, we have a section for colleagues to learn various procedures in the lab, like cleaning up mercury spills and working with radioactive materials.

Our motto is "Viscus, incompositus, ignavus, nuntius," which means "Entropy, disorder, disinclination, and messiness." It is a perfect description of the condition of this website and should give some idea of the probability that we will ever do anything about it.

Our other motto is "No Flash, No Javascript, No animated ads, No cookies, No tracking, and No viruses."

To Top