San Francisco - a running commentary

OK, so I've been here for about a week now. It's been so far an exciting and overwhelming experience - there is so much to learn! And I am impatient with myself and want to get in the groove right now. I need to learn to slow down a little...

Anyway, I did manage to drop in here at the blog a couple of times and report on meetups with some local bloggers, but here is a little bit more about the week so far...

San Francisco is quite a unique city - I really cannot say it reminds me of any other place I've been to. Quite ecclectic and freewheeling. And hilly! My house is on top of the hill and the last couple of blocks getting there (after work) are excercises in alpinism! But I did walk around a little and got oriented in the neighborhood which is quite nice. Many of the streets in the area are named after states. I live in Kansas St. Next door are Vermont, Rhode Island and Wisconsin streets. I guess they have them all. Except they decided to be efficient and fuse North and South Carolina into a single street:

Last night there was a big All Stars baseball game in San Francisco and the area close to the stadium was crazy with events and vendors and stuff all week long. And PLoS offices are right next to the stadium. So, going to lunch the other day, I saw the Budweiser Clydesdales:

And they had huge baseballs floating in the water next to the stadium:

And this morning, they raised the bridge for a couple of kayakers - because they were being filmed for a popular local TV show Bay Area Backroads (picture taken from my office window):

After a couple of days of nursing his jet lag, Professor Steve Steve decided to come to work with me. You already saw that he first wanted to say Hello to Liz Allen. But he did not stop there. He also wanted to see what Susanne DeRisi does to the PLoS website:

And had a ball with Richard Cave, the Head of the IT team:

Then he got hungry and went to South Park for a quick lunch:

Hey, who's this? Ah, the PLoS ONE production team, Tessa Brunton and Bonnie Real:

You cannot see it in the picture, but Professor Steve Steve is blushing here:

Now this is a picture from a lunch a couple of days ago, at a Mexian restaurant which has food that I like (not Taco Bell crap). From left to right: Sebastian Toomey, Susanne DeRisi, Russell Uman, Céline Nadeau, Tim Sullivan and Richard Cave:

And here are the latter four again:

That is the IT team at PLoS, celebrating a new victory.

And this was also a kind of a test for the efficacy of Facebook as a tool! How? Well, the announcement was first made on the PLoS Facebook group, which, after only two weeks of existence, has 191 members at the moment of writing this. The news was immediately picked up and disseminated by a couple of bloggers, some hours before it showed up on the PLoS ONE homepage, on the PLoS blog and on the PLoS blog again. So, perhaps I was right about it after all, though a number of careful students and observers of the internet are not so sure yet.

OK, back to fun. Today I had lunch with Natalie Bouaravong who just got promoted to the position of Production Manager of PLoS Biology. And last night, Barbara Cohen, the Executive Editor, and I went to Axis Cafe for an evening of science fun! Unfortunately, Barbara is soon going to leave us, so if you think you have the chops for it, apply for her job!

The Ask A Scientist series is something similar to a Science Cafe. Last night, Dr.Fred Wilt talked to a nice crowd about sea urchins, the history of the study of sea urchins, the basics of their embryonic development, the related evolutionary questions, and the way his own research has moved from molecular biology to materials science due to his work on the embryonic development of the sea urchin skeleton - the spicules:

The audience was very excited. Dr.Wilt is very, very good at presenting science to lay audience. Professor Steve Steve was very impressed!