Housekeeping

Back home after two weeks. Jet-lag will probably hit me tomorrow. Lots of catch-up with PLoS work awaits me tomorrow as well, but blogging should continue afterwards - several more posts about the Belgrade part of the trip are yet to come.
As you may already be aware I am about to embark on a trip to Europe again. I will be traveling on Sunday and arriving at Lindau, Germany on Monday for the 59th Meeting of Nobel Laureates. The list of Nobel Laureates (23 of them) and the list of about 600 young researchers from 66 countries are very impressive. Of course, not being a chemist, I'll have to do some homework before I go (I printed out the complete list of descriptions of all of them to read on the airplane), learning what these people did to get their prizes and what the younger ones are doing hoping to get a Nobel in the future…
I posted only 128 posts in May - the reason for this reduction in numbers I explained here. Traffic has suffered only a little bit so far, I'll keep an eye. Looking back at the month, I noticed how many videos I have posted: about half are very informative and thought-provoking, the other half are hilariously funny. Take a look. So, what did I actually blog about last month? There was some serious science on this blog last month, e.g., Why social insects do not suffer from ill effects of rotating and night shift work? and Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! I celebrated my birthday and…
As you may know, scienceblogs.com is run on MoveableType 4 specially modified by SixApart for the site. The latest tweak was, apparently, a mistake, so the system was reverted to an older version (I have no idea what I am talking about, am I?) which makes posting and commenting painfully slow and likely to cause time-outs. The help is on the way, and the system should be fixed by the end of the week, so we hear. If you post a comment and get a timeout, it is likely your comment has registered but will take a couple of minutes to show up. Save the text elsewhere (WordPad or such), click on…
April was a busy month, so I posted only 145 times. Also, posts that would have been just simple links and one-liners are now more likely to be found on Twitter (from which I import the feeds into FriendFeed and Facebook). Go through the April archives - lots of news and several excellent (or very funny) videos to be found there - but here are the "more serious" posts of the past month: First, there were several interesting events in April, often populated by friendly bloggers, e.g., Seder, Triangle Blogger Bash at DPAC and Triangle Tweetup Tonight. Probably the most thoughtful (and perhaps…
I posted 239 posts in March. The best post of the month, IMHO, is Defining the Journalism vs. Blogging Debate, with a Science Reporting angle which is now slowly accumulating comments as well as links from various places online. My second-best post was the in-depth review of Fiddler On The Roof with Topol. The Open Laboratory 2008 is now up for sale. The guest editor for the Open Laboratory 2009 was announced with great fanfare. Lots this month about 'citizen scientists, e.g., Science crowdsourcing - ecology. And Twitter for Birders. I also discovered an Innovative Use of Twitter: monitoring…
In February I posted 166 times. This includes two BPR3-icon-worthy posts about science! The first was on Circadian Rhythm of Aggression in Crayfish with the longish addendum on citing blog posts in scientific literature. The second was An Awesome Whale Tale, and, related to this paper, I announced the new Palaeontology Collection in PLoS ONE in Fossils! Fossils! Fossils!. I also did an interview with Dr.Adam Ratner. I have covered another session in ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday 3:15pm - Blog carnivals. Miss Baker and her students were on NPR and one of the students wrote a Malaria Song that…
I know, I know, it's middle of February, but I was busy and neglected my duties. So, to catch up with the monthly feature, here is the best of January at A Blog Around The Clock: Of course, the entire month was dominated by ScienceOnline'09, so the rest of posts were mostly quick links, cartoons and YouTube videos, which is, I hope, understandable. But I did write, post facto, some of my own coverage of the conference, e.g., ScienceOnline09 - Thursday, ScienceOnline'09 - Friday Morning Coffee Cupping, ScienceOnline'09 - Friday Lab Tour: the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, ScienceOnline'09 -…
As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings. OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds! From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has…
Can't say "welcome a new SciBling" because he's not new! PalMD is now flying solo! He moved out of the fraternity house and rented his own house: White Coat Underground. Go say Hello, bookmark, susbcribe, update your feeds, whatever you like to do, but keep reading Pal.
Yesterday was the first day I was able to post since the ScienceBlogs upgrade because of glitches in the system.  Now I'm headed off to Durham, NC, until Sunday.  More below the jump: I'll be visiting a Duke science journalism class and speaking about my book at a Women in Science and Engineering event on Friday.  Then Saturday I'll be at the ScienceOnline09 conference talking about blogging and breaking into print publication.  I'll post from the road if there are any breaking developments related to the assistance creature story I wrote for the New York Times Magazine, which I've been doing…
OK, the system is up and running. Let's see how this new software works!
To celebrate the successful (!!) upgrade of ScienceBlogs to MT4, here is a dragon: Thanks, as always, for your patience.
If you really, really want to comment on my posts during the upgrade, you can do that on my FriendFeed as all my posts are exported there and you can comment there as well.
You've probably already gotten the news that ScienceBlogs is getting a backend upgrade to MT4 this weekend. While this is going on (from Friday 1 PM Eastern until sometime Saturday, we hope), you'll still be able to read the ScienceBlogs posts that are already up, but Sb bloggers won't be able to publish new posts and you won't be able to leave new comments. (Actually, I'm hearing rumblings that the comments might already have been disabled. Hold that thought! Jot it down on a Post-it or something, 'cause I want to read it when the comments return in MT4) During our radio silence, you…
In a display of stunningly bad timing given all the comments people have been posting here in recent days, the entire ScienceBlogs network will be down from 1pm today until sometime Saturday (or whenever they're done) for a system upgrade. I won't be able to post, and readers won't be able to comment, until the system is back online (alas). If there's some pressing breaking news while this network is down, I'll post it on my old blog here. But I doubt that will happen. Please check back in a day or so to post your comments or, if you simply can't wait, you can email them to me via the…
Starting tomorrow at 1pm EST and lasting through most of Saturday (or until it's done), scienceblogs.com will be undergoing an upgrade to MoveableType4, specially fitted by SixApart for the gigantic network we have here. What does it mean to you, the readers, and to us, the bloggers? We will not be able to post any new content during this period. You will not be able to post comments. I am sure some bloggers will "front-load" the weekend by posting a bunch of stuff tomorrow morning, so there will be plenty of stuff for you to read. Some bloggers may post temporarily on their old blogs (check…
Update: Culture Dish's feed is now live! (Thanks Sb folks!) To subscribe to this blog, just click this link for RSS feed or subscribe to get Culture Dish via email by clicking here. Also: I'll be on NPR's Day-to-Day today talking about Creature Comforts. The show airs at 1pm eastern time. You can listen to it live online here, or anytime after 3pm ET on NPR's site. Stay tuned for more updates.
Yes, it's true, Culture Dish has found a new (and improved) home. After a long blogging hiatus while I finished writing my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (see below for details), I'm now packing up shop and moving here to ScienceBlogs (you can subscribe via RSS here, or get Culture Dish updates delivered to your email inbox by clicking here). As a welcome to readers old and new, here's a bit of a Culture Dish history as an introduction: I'm a science writer whose forthcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, tells the story of the amazing HeLa cell line and the woman…
Yes, it's true, Culture Dish has found a new (and improved) home. After a long blogging hiatus while I finished writing my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (see below for details), I'm now packing up shop and moving here to ScienceBlogs (you can subscribe via RSS here, or get Culture Dish updates delivered to your email inbox by clicking here). As a welcome to readers old and new, here's a bit of a Culture Dish history as an introduction: I'm a science writer whose forthcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, tells the story of the amazing HeLa cell line and the woman…