Category Archives: Technology

Scientific Programmer

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Vandaag is een grote dag, want het is mijn eerste werkdag als Scientific Programmer bij TNO Kwaliteit van Leven / Universiteit Leiden. Ik ga samen met 4 andere developers verspreid over Nederland (Universiteit Wageningen, Utrecht WKZ, Amsterdam en Universiteit Leiden) een metabolics datawarehouse infrastructuur en applicaties opzetten binnen het Netherlands Metabolomics Centre.

Met behulp van Mass Spectrometers worden op diverse plekken in Nederland biologische monsters geanalyseerd op metabolieten. Metabolieten zijn moleculen die ontstaan tijdens de stofwisseling en sommigen zijn weefsel- en organisme specifiek. Een Mass Spectrometer meet de massa van moleculen (lipiden) in een sample, en dat levert een enorme hoeveelheid data (honderden MB’s per sample) op. Het doel is deze data op een gestandaardiseerde manier te analyseren, op te slaan in een datawarehouse, met daarbij de kwalitatieve informatie van de studie, en te analyseren en interpreteren.

Elke developer heeft, naast het opzetten van de datawarehouse, een eigen specialisatie. Zo zal er in Leiden bijvoorbeeld met name worden gekeken naar identificatie van de ruwe data, en mijn focus binnen TNO zal de biologische interpretatie en visualisatie van de data zijn, en zo ben ik weer terug bij mijn biologische achtergrond :) Ik ben erg benieuwd en ik heb zin om de uitdaging op te pakken!

Disabling voicemail and redirects

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Normally it does not cost you anything to use your voicemail in your home country, but when you are abroad (depending on your mobile operator and/or subscription model) it may cost you a lot of money to keep your voicemail enabled.

The reason is that when someone tries to call you, he will be reverted to your voicemail box in your home country by the mobile operator in the country your are in at that time. This means you will charged for:
1. the costs for reverting calls to your voicemailbox (charges for calling abroad)
2. the costs for incoming calls abroad; even if the caller does not leave a message you will be charged the costs (charges for receiving calls abroad)
Depending on the country you are in, you will be charged per second or per minute. So, regarding the latter, if someone tries to call you and does not leave a message, you will still be charged a 1 minute call abroad + redirection.

While it looks like my mobile operator Telfort tries to obscure the actual costs (at least I cannot find a clear answer on their website) I found more information about the costs elsewhere. Apparantly Telfort charges about € 2,52 + 19% tax per call ending up in your voicemail box. This may sum up to a nice total when you get called a lot.

Disable all redirects using the ##21* mobile hash code

You have to pay double for people reaching your voicemail when abroad and you have to pay to listen to your voicemails.

So, what can we do about it? First best practise is to make sure you disable voicemail with your mobile operator when you go abroad. Secondly, there are several common mobile network codes which offer a broad range of functionality of which ##21# is the most interesting to us. This particular code will deactivate all call diverts, making sure you will not get charged unexpected costs. Just enter the code and press the send / OK / call button and all call diverts will be deactivated. Use *21# to view the current status.

To re-activate the diverts, you need to know the number of your voicemail box and use the following code: **21*phonenumber#. However, as I am moving to Australia and I actually don’t want to reachabe 24/7, I do not intend to re-enable my voicemail so I can’t help you with the proper number to re-enable diverts :)

ps. A list of mobile hash codes (in Dutch).