dhinds@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds) (07/16/90)
I just got the MSDOS port of GNUPLOT, and had a go at recompiling it with my Topspeed C compiler. After a little tweaking, I got it to build without errors (I had to change the floating point exception handler, and write header files for the .ASM units). And now, it ALMOST works. The actual plotting is fine, but in all the PC graphics modes, all text annotations on plots are completely scrambled. Instead of drawing the characters, long lines appear at arbitrary locations around the screen. The graph shows up alright under all the garbage. I'd like to get this to work, because the .EXE file produced by my compiler is MUCH tighter than the one bundled with the archive - 160K vs. 290K. Has anyone else tried doing this and had a similar problem, or recognizes what might be wrong? Since text is drawn with the same line drawing routine as regular graphics, the problem doesn't seem to be in the low level drivers, which would be my first suspect. I presume the .EXE in the archive was compiled with MSC. What a pig - I never would have thought it would be 2X as big as the TSC code for such a large program. I used the MSC makefile as a guide for building, so my EXE is about as equivalent as I can get with my compiler. -David Hinds dhinds@popserver.stanford.edu Newsgroups: rec.running Subject: Re: Running and Allergies Summary: Expires: References: <1815@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> <222@nih-csl.nih.gov> <1844@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: usa Organization: AIR, Stanford University Keywords: In article <1844@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> jbabcock@gmuvax2.UUCP (James A. Babcock) writes: >In article <222@nih-csl.nih.gov> sullivan@suntory.dcrt.nih.gov (Sullivan) writes: >> >> Excuse me! Weak adrenal glands?? I've never heard of this! >> Allergies have to do with an immune system that has been sensitized >> to a particular allergen such as ragweed pollen. The immune >> system over reacts to the allergen releasing many things one of >> which is histamine. Histamines cause the usual symptoms seen >> with allergies. >> >> I have never heard of the adrenals having anything to do with >> allergies or their serverity. Could you please provide some >> more information about this as I'm a bit skeptical. >> >[description of description of role of adrenal gland in blood sugar > maintenance follows...] Your description contains a grain of truth, but I don't think it does justice to the biochemistry involved. It is true that the insulin response following a meal can overshoot, and result in a temporarily depressed blood sugar level. This is part of why we feel sluggish after a big meal. Also, one of adrenalin's activities is to stimulate the release of glycogen stores, to raise the blood sugar level. But a low blood sugar level does not normally stimulate adrenalin release - otherwise the feedback would quickly correct the level, and obviously since the sluggishness is real, this isn't happening. If you do something that stimulates adrenalin release, like go running, this will jack the blood sugar level back up. I think this is why you can go running before breakfast without dying. I find the "weak adrenals" idea very far-fetched; Adrenalin releaves the symptoms of allergies the same way it relieves asthma. It raises blood pressure, promoting constriction of blood vessels. It also relaxes smooth muscle surrounding bronchioles in the lungs. These counteract histamine-mediated inflammatory symptoms of allergies and asthma. Neither is in any sense "caused" by a failure of adrenalin to do its duty- it just happens that adrenalin can provide some relief. >The diet suggested was a high protein diet, especially when the >symtoms of hypoglycemia are present (dizzyness when getting up, >headaches, lethargy, etc.). He recommends satisfying your sweet >tooth with fruits and other natural sugars and by all means stay >away from highly refined sugar. That stuff is digested very quickly >and your blood sugar will go sky high (temporarily). I hope this >is of some help for you. The distinction between "natural sugars" and "highly refined sugars" is a product of naive nutrition pseudo-science. A molecule of sucrose is trivially interconvertible with a pair of simple sugar molecules: fructose and glucose. There is no significant difference between the absorption of refined sugar and "natural" sugar (fructose). One of the first steps of sugar metabolism is the isomerization of glucose to fructose. An equally valid variant of the "natural sugars are better" argument is that sucrose is "harder to digest" because several more enzymatic steps are required before it can enter its metabolic pathway. Sort of like arguing that wood is harder to burn than sugar because it is more complex. The analogy is actually biochemically quite apt.