# Summary of IRC Log from September 2, 2014

• A discussion about reverse engineering a pattern file format took place, with user nmz787 sharing progress on extracting bitmap images from the file, including code samples and image results at http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/actual.jpg and http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/maybe2.png.

• A low-cost mobile phone microscopy technique using a reversed mobile phone camera lens was shared via a PLOS ONE paper (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0095330).

• User kanzure shared resources about metabolic pathways, specifically highlighting MetaCyc and BioCyc databases with interactive pathway maps, including "superpathways" that represent metabolic processes across multiple organisms (http://www.metacyc.org/).

• A comprehensive Linux observability tools diagram was shared by user heath (http://www.brendangregg.com/Perf/linux_observability_tools.png), showing various monitoring and debugging tools available in Linux.

• A brief discussion about molecular visualization software took place, with users comparing tools like Mayavi2, VTK, and PyMOL, noting stability issues with some tools particularly when hardware 3D rendering isn't available.

• A controversy was noted regarding Wei Dai's handling of the Extropians mailing list archive (https://github.com/weidai11/extropians/pull/1), with concerns about potential content modification.