The Blog

The personal life update:

tqa — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:30:03 +0000

The personal life update:

Since I've obviously started blogging again (at least for the moment) I thought this might be a good time to bring you up to date on the latest excuses reasons I haven't been blogging much over the last few months.

I've been working a real, live jobby job. It's one that has extremely limited internet access, and has been exhausting enough that I haven't really had the energy to write much after work - I'm now an Assistant Aquatics Manager on an Army base. (Think Hasselhoff with a big goatee and bigger gut.) I'll probably have more to write about that later. For now, I'm still working on figuring out what is and isn't going to be appropriate for me to write publicly and under my own name.

I'll have more to say about that, and other things, later on. For now, I've got to run. There's a big downside to being employed in a physical fitness field on a military base - every now and then I'm forced to wake up at an hour even more insanely early than the soldiers do, because someone has to get things ready for them to do their 0-dark-30 morning PT. And tomorrow is one of those days.

tqa Thu, 07/08/2010 - 16:30

Tags

The Blog

Um, what on earth? Do these people even read what they brainfart?

Mike, looking forward to some more of your bio-musings when you get the chance.

Let me just say that the first comment is a block of completely illogical and incoherent text.

Hope you can continue to post Mike.

Yay, Mike! You're a real science blogger now.

OK, OK. I'm just jealous - I've never been hit by a David Mabus attack.

*sigh*

what's wrong with this dmab guys.
Oh right, i'm waiting for your writing Mike, when you are not to busy

Picture of the Day, and a brief programming note.

tqa — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:54:58 +0000

Picture of the Day, and a brief programming note.

This is largely a test post. I'm dragging myself kicking and screaming into the new era of online communications. If I've done things correctly, both my facebook account and twitter feed should provide some sort of announcement when new material posts to this blog.

That doesn't mean that they will, of course, but they should.

To keep this from being a totally wasted post, you'll find a picture below the fold. It's a recent experiment with an IR filter I picked up a while back.

tqa Mon, 05/18/2009 - 09:54

Tags

The Blog

How difficult is it to take IR pictures like this? Do you basically just need to slap on a filter, or is there a bit more to it?

There's a little more to it, but not a huge amount. At a minimum, you're going to need a tripod and (most likely) a bulb control for the shutter.

IR filters are basically opaque to visible light. Once you put the filter on, you can't see anything through the camera. This means that it's typically necessary to line up the shot with the camera on a tripod, then attach the filter and take the shot.

A second issue that pops up is exposure length. Most dSLR cameras have an IR-blocking filter over the sensor. This greatly reduces the sensor's sensitivity to IR and requires very long exposure times. (That picture was a 150-second exposure at f/11.) Most dSLRs will only allow you to set exposure lengths of up to 30 sec. Anything longer requires bulb control.

That doesn't seem too bad. I have been using a tripod and shutter remote for taking nighttime pictures, so I think I have the basic technique down.

Thanks!

Why f/11, Mike?

I see no depth of field concern for this image. Or was it because the IR focal point is unpredictably offset from the visible?

Technical Difficulties

tqa — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:08:09 +0000

Technical Difficulties

Just so you know, I haven't forgotten about this blog. My laptop suffered a major hard drive failure a few days ago, and my internet access has been limited by the need to share the desktop with my wife and my daughter, both of whom need to use the computer for educational purposes.

Things should be back to normal shortly.

tqa Tue, 09/30/2008 - 06:08

Tags

The Blog

Some London Thank Yous

tqa — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:43:04 +0000

Some London Thank Yous

As I write this, I'm sitting bouncing up and down in a sardine can high above the Atlantic Ocean. If I'm lucky, this state of affairs will continue for another few hours, and be followed in rapid succession by two repeats of the experience, a car ride home, and re-familiarization with my own bed.

The last week has been absolutely fantastic, and there are quite a few people that I'd like to thank for contributing to the experience.

In no particular order:

Matt Brown for composing and conducting two spectacular tours of London - one that focused on pubs, and a second that took us to quite a few sites that are really, really cool if you're remotely interested in science. I'll have more on both of those later in the week.

Karen James of The Beagle Project for helping to contribute to both the science sites tour and the liver damage I sustained over the course of the week.

Maxine Clarke for giving us the grand tour of Nature, and all of the employees there for putting up with the flock of cats bloggers as we spread chaos quietly meandered through their workspace.

Simon Frantz of the Nobel Foundation for several intoxicateding conversations, one of which apparently included the phrase "we should do this as an unconference session". I'd also like to thank Simon for his role in the frantic last second efforts to come up with any sort of unconference plan putting the finishing touches on the unconference, and for running around the lecture theatre with the microphone facilitating the ensuing discussion. More on the unconference session will also follow shortly.

Matt Brown (again), Corrie Lok, Anna Kushnir, the people at The Royal Institution, and all the folks at Nature Network who put the conference together. They did a huge amount of work, and produced an outstanding conference.

David McOrmish and David Field of English Heritage, as well as their two colleagues whose names I never got, for allowing a random tourist to tag along with them as they toured the archaeological digs around Stonehenge. More on that at some point, too.

Mo Costandi, Grrlscientist, and Bob O'Hara for spending time hanging around and touring things after the conference ended.

Henry Gee for introducing me to the wonderful world of unicycling girrafes, and for helping to remind me that everyone can fit in somewhere - it's just a matter of finding it.

And, of course, my wife and children for their extreme kindness in letting me have the time away from them, and for (presumably) taking me back afterward.

Pre-posting update: The problem with foreign places is that they're all so damn far away. I finished writing this thing hours ago, and I've still got something like another two hours left in this winged tin can. I really hate daytime long-distance flights. Sleeping too much makes the jet lag worse. The movies are boring, the seats are small, the food marginal, and as it turns out I'm actually not very excited about the books that I stuck in the carry-on.

Of course, I hate nighttime long-distance flights, too. The seats have all the sleepability of your typical concrete block. There's always someone who snores, and by the time you nod off it's time to wake up and land. It's very rare that you don't wind up walking around like a zombie for most of the day you arrive.

And, yes, I would like some cheese with that whine. Thanks for asking.

tqa Sun, 09/07/2008 - 06:43

Tags

The Blog

travel

Just to be clear, you have complained about your own taste in books.

Which puts you about (checks watch) 28 years behind me on that (valid) complaint.

1. You're welcome. Thank you for coming out. Delighted to meet you.

2. I will not bear the responsibility of other people's self-inflicted liver damage, I'll have you know. Ahem.

You're most welcome, Mike. Remember - on the internet, no-one knows you're a girrafe.

Thanks for the shout-out, Mike. It was great to meet you in London. From your post, the benefits seem to have outweighed the costs (the tin can, etc). So I hope you'll consider it worth doing again sometime, when you've recovered.

These lightweights, who think that trans-Atlantic is 'long haul'. Feh.

(Yes, I know where Hawaii is. ;) )

Liveblogging From London

tqa — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:04:30 +0000

Liveblogging From London

I'm sitting in the Faraday Theatre at the Royal Institution right now, at the Nature Network's Science Blogging 2008 conference. There are about 100 people in the room, 90% of whom I don't recognize at all. 90% of the people I do recognize are people I've met for the first time somewhere in the last two days. There's a list of the attendees and their blogs on the conference website. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't had the chance to read all of those blogs yet.

At the same time, it's also great (in a way) that I don't know who most of the people are or where they blog. If nothing else, it shows just how large the science blogging community has become. It's going to be interesting to see what comes out of our interaction and conversations.

As the day goes by, I'm going to try to update this post with bits about who is saying what at the conference. There's good, free wifi here, so I'll go on at least until the battery runs out. At that point, with 100 bloggers in the room, there may be a Darwinian struggle to see who gets a power outlet.

The updates will be below the fold.

10:00: Ben Goldacre (www.badscience.net) Kenote

One of he benefits of sciencebloggins is the ability to communicate on a small scale basis, and the ability to write for an audience that is interested in science.

Too much MSM science reporting is dumbed down to the point where there's no science content.

(I just got excited because I saw a cord coming from someone's computer, but it's not a power cord. It looks like Cameron Neylon might be putting together a video podcast of the event.)

1030: More from Ben

Complete and utter failure of MSM in case of Dore's "Dyslexia Miracle Cure" contrasted with same story on blogs. Gimpy Blog, Brain Duck, and others covered everything well. Gimpy broke news of company going broke. Brain Duck did a "full-on motherfuck journal club takedown" of the company's claims.

Shows importance of blogs for rapid takedown. Antivaxers every claim, anywhere, is pounced on by an "army of nerds" immediately. Blogs as network, with interlinks, are very strong in this regard.

Finally:

Need more people to facilitate communication from scientists to the public in their own words. We need more editors, not writers. Blogs can and do do this well.

Panel discussion: The scientific life, exposed

Jenny Rohn, Grrl Scientist, Anna Kushnir. Moderated by Mo Costandi.

Grrl: Blogs show scientists as human beings.

Jennifer: It's important to show science, warts and all. Most people haven't met a scientist. They should see people as humans.

Mo: What's wrong with the way scientists talk to each other?

Anna: Nobody else - including scientists in other fields - can understand. Jargon is a barrier.

Grrl: Jargon is necessary, but can push people away.

Anna: Blogging is a way we can support and relate to each other - support from people not in the same boat.

Jennifer: Yes, but can be hard if not anonymous.

(I've got more battery than Henry. He's turning green with envy in the row behind me right now.)

11:00 Questions for panel.

Difference between blog and forum?

Grrl: Blog as journal club example. More directed communication.

Jennifer: No big difference if commenting is available on a blog. Slightly different community.

Anna: Blog is a personal space, with a backstory. Readers know your tone and where you're coming from.

(Big group LOL as keynote speaker is revealed as not having turned off cell phone ringer.)

How do you view your audience?

Grrl: General public - can use background to tell story of science.

Jennifer: General public

Anna: Both scientists and public.

Talk about anonymity?

Jennifer: I like non-anonymous blogging, but don't refer to colleagues by name. Nature Network is very friendly. Has heard that we have occasional flamewars here.

Grrl: I am anonymous. Started that way because I was told blogging a career-ender and not serious about science. Not sure anonymity allows people to say things they wouldn't say under their own name. Introduces some in audience to term "sock puppet".

Anna: Internet, not necessarily anonymity, allows people to say things they wouldn't.

(In classic internet moment, Henry and I are exchanging comments on this post while sitting about 12 inches apart.)

Is there intrinsic value to exposing scientific life to public?

Jennifer: Public under impression that facts are facts, shocked that there's debate and division and grey areas. Imparting that to public is valuable. Scientists debating makes people nervous, need to convince that this is normal.

Grrl: Blog shows evolution of scientific thought. Behind the scenes, and the way we bump into walls as part of the scientific process, very valuable.

Handling hostile commenters:

Grrl: Ignore. Rarely attack back. Let readers take care of it.

Jennifer: Animal behavior approach. Ignoring it is best way to handle it.

Ben (from peanut gallery): Benefits of people in comments as accidental example of why you are right.

Anna: Is saying something that sounds really intelligent, but I missed most of it while I was blogging the question.

Perception/Support from boss and institution?

Jennifer: Boss reads and likes blog. Head of department has no clue (probably). Don't know about funder. Stopped worrying about it.

Anna: No worry, surrounded by people who don't read blogs at all. Nobody knew I was blogging.

Grrl: Unemployed, but blog helping as positive influence on me and because other scientists like blog.

Is exposing scientific life more willing to attract young people to science or chase them away.

Jennifer: Too many scientists. But can work to help bring people in.

Grrl: Way too many scientists. Bad situation. Not responsible to encourage kids to go into science, but irresponsible not to show them importance of science.

Anna: No pressing need for more scientists, but do need to replace ourselves at some point. Blogging can show people that science is something that you can do.

(Got to run and find power during break.)

12:00: Breakout 1: There's a giraffe on my unicycle: Can blogging unlock your creativity?

Henry Gee, Brian Clegg, Clare Dudman.

(Yes. I've got power. I'm in a massively uncomfortable seat, and can't see the screen worth a damn, but the battery is slowly charging.)

Clare: Theory of creativity.

Poincare and ideas. Ideas liked "hooked atoms". Preparation lets the ideas fly. Impasse happens when bad links made - take a break. "Atoms" keep flying around and connecting. If lucky, right connection is made. Insight moment. Best ideas can come from linking widely different places - Wegener's look at icebergs leading to ideas on continental drift.

Mark Jung-Beeman (Northern Illinois) linking experimentation to Poincare. How problems solved? Trial and error or insight/illumination? Half of subjects use each. FMRI, etc. Both sides of brain necessary.

Brian Clegg: We don't have too many scientists, we have too many biologists. We need more physicists.

People don't usually think of scientists as involved in a creative process.

Exercise: Jot down in 30 sec list of as many things that you can't do with a coat hanger.

Make tea.

Tie your shoes.

Take a picture.

Fix a flat tire.

Prepare a talk on creativity.

Others:

Travel back in time

Remove anthrax from a federal building

Drink it.

Move a desert.

Make sense of Henry.

Impregnate a swan.

Nit picking over phrasing of the question - you can do most of the things on the list while holding a coat hanger. Yes, he meant using a coat hanger to do the things.

Can drink a coat hanger. Melt it, drink it. You die, but you did it.

Think about assumptions about coat hanger - how does picture of coat hanger in brain limit thinking. How does getting rid of assumptions change things.

Richard gets prize for coming up with "Make sense of Henry." Can't do impossible, even with coat hanger.

Clare:

Effect of multiculturalism in helping people see past unseen assumptions. Blogs as platform for broadening perspectives. Disability, different specialists, especially from outside science. Blogging about research promotes interaction, helps reinforce science as a community effort. Benefits of writing in character - "Dr. Grump"' perspective. Importance of play. Importance of competitions, dumb questions, and picture posts. Jokes and humor help.

(Along those lines, I just posted a picture quiz game on Pandas Thumb. And someone's phone is ringing. It's in one of the speakers' bags. We may be developing a theme here. )

1230:

Henry: Blogging in an exercise in surrealism. Is a touch of Asperger's necessary for science? Thinking in ways where you can put things together in new ways. "No unicycling giraffes beyond this point."

Audience - we don't know who we're writing for until we find out.

Questions:

Jennifer: Does depression inhibit creativity. I think yes. So does Clare. Tests with non-depressed people indicate that happiness/humor can help creativity. No studies (probably) with clinically depressed subjects.

Is blogging more than a format?

Most creative post?

Henry: Unicycle.

Brian: Don't think of myself as particularly creative when blogging.

Clare: Several odd questions posts - lots of interesting replies.

Richard: 1 am ideas can be eureka moments, but often complete crap.

How can we be creative where we are?

Heather: Creative in a vacuum? Is there blogging w/o comments.

Henry: Did blogging type paper columns.

Me: Can assumptions about what science blogging should be hurt us?

Brian: Yes. Sometimes it takes input from the outside, and stupid questions are needed to spark discovery.

Also, the more you do creative things, the better you get at it.

Henry: Getting into what you do is hard to do it from the beginning.

Lunch

There are three breakout sessions this afternoon. The one that Simon Frantz and I proposed (which stemmed from a conversation started at a point during the pub crawl when we were confidently solving global problems) was selected, so we spend most of lunch figuring out what we're actually going to say and do. We'll be talking in the Faraday Theatre in a little bit.

I'm sweating a bit.

1:45: Breakout 5: Science blogs and online forums as teaching tools

Martin Fenner, Oliver Obst, Jeff Marlow.

Jeff: Recognize both the benefits and barriers to blogging, Don't be afraid to assign blogging.

Challenges:

Teaching students - and figuring out - when online is a legitimate source.

Good and bad examples;

Bad: Mandatory course "communities"

Good: Expedition blogs. Phoenix mission blogs one example

Questions: How do you get scientists to engage with students on blogs.

Jeff: Sell as an outreach activity. Every lab should have a blog. Update websites.

Oliver: Central Medical Library Munster.

Information cascade approach.

Weblog updated daily (podcast and rss also)

Weekly newsletter summarizes blogs

Print format journal format on 3 month basis

Knowledge Wiki

Teaching use:

Micro instructions from FAQ, but works better in Wiki Format.

Education cascade:

Questions and answers addressed ad hoc

Microinstruction on blog and wiki

Library Instruction Courses.

By the way, The Friendfeed room for the conference has some nice stuff.

Martin: Forum as journal club.

Benefits sort of obvious, I think.

More could be done, tools needed.

Better bookmarking integration,

more full text annotation.

Student participation:

If actual value added

If class credit given.

We're off to a break after this, and I won't be blogging the next session, as I'm running it. Hopefully someone in the Friendfeed room will put something up. I've got to learn how to use friendfeed (sadly, the session on that ran against one I wanted to go to more).

I'm back, and in the final session.

I talked more than I'd have liked at my own session, and if you want to know what I've said you'll have to check friendfeed.

I think I'm going to wrap this up, though. It's getting hard to both blog the talk and pay attention to it.

tqa Fri, 08/29/2008 - 23:04

Tags

Public Perception of Science

The Blog

London

tqa — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:41:24 +0000

London

Only now, as I sit here in my hotel room eating a cheddar and roasted tomato sandwich, with a packet of Worcester Sauce crisps on the side, is the fact that I'm in London starting to sink in.

In a few minutes, I'm going downstairs to meet up with Mo, and we're going to stroll over to the Jeremy Bentham, which is the first stop on a tour of scientifically-connected pubs that the Nature Network's Matt Brown has arranged. I'm bringing my camera, and I'll try to remember to let the autofocus take over from me as the evening progresses.

tqa Thu, 08/28/2008 - 06:41

Tags

The Blog

travel

sciblog

Ahh, autofocus. Stepping in when I can't step up. I miss my old 35mm Minolta with the big lenses. But then there is the digital control edge. That I like.

Could you further describe a "packet of Worcester Sauce crisps" for us?

Crisps (ie potato chips) flavoured with (or like) Worcester sauce, which is to British cuisine what Tabasco is to US cuisine. Reading from my bottle of Lea & Perrins, the ingredients are vinegar, molassess, sugar, salt, anchovies, onions, garlic and "spice".

Thanks, Ginger Yellow. It seems that I have a bottle of the sauce but didn't make the connection until just now. You provided the critical information that allowed me to make the connection. Aaaahhhh, Science!

I'm out the door to get some chips . . .

Science Blogging in London.

tqa — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:30:56 +0000

Science Blogging in London.

Next week I'll be in London for Nature Network's Science Blogging Conference. It's entirely possible that I'm looking forward to the trip as much as GrrlScientist is, and not just because I'll be hanging out in the UK for a week afterward. Both ScienceBlogs and the Nature Network host groups of bloggers who are interested in and write about science, but there are also quite a few differences between the two groups. It'll be interesting to sit down with folks there and look at our different perspectives. Hopefully, everyone will be able to take away something new from the discussions.

After the conference, I'm planning on doing some scientific sightseeing. I've been to London before, but that was a family trip, and there were some constraints on what I could do and where we could go. (To put it another way, I could only get away with boring everyone else so much without facing a revolt.) This time, I'm going to try and get to a few more places that have strong history of science ties. Down house is definitely on the agenda, as are trips to Oxford and Cambridge. Aside from that, I'm leaving things up in the air a bit. Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

tqa Fri, 08/22/2008 - 07:30

Tags

The Blog

travel

Matt Brown is the expert on London science, so you can drag the information out of him during the pub crawl on Thursday. I guess you've signed up for his tour on Friday too.

I'll be hanging round for a few days too, so I might be able to help translate the local language. I haven't done the touristy stuff in London, but I did go on a work trip to the Botanical Gardens, which was fun.

I probably wouldn't bother with the Science Museum, as it's very much aimed at kids. The Natural History Museum is spectacular, though (gorgeous Victorian architecture as well). Unfortunately I don't think the Athenaeum is open to the public, but you could visit the library of the Royal Society. You may also want to check out the memorials to Newton, Darwin, Lyell, Hooke and other scientists at Westminster Abbey. When in Oxford (if you haven't already been), you should definitely check out the Pitt Rivers museum (more ethnographic than science, but still great).

Vacation's over.

tqa — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:50:05 +0000

Vacation's over.

I haven't been blogging much over the last couple of weeks, for a variety of reasons. But it's a new year, a couple of side products that were sucking away my will to live have been wrapped up, and the kids are heading out the door and back to school. It's definitely a good time to get back into the swing of things.

tqa Mon, 01/07/2008 - 01:50

Tags

The Blog

More Changes

tqa — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:07:14 +0000

More Changes

A couple of weeks ago, I started making some changes to the blog. I had hoped to get all of them done that weekend, but the weather interfered with that plan. (It was nice; I went swimming.) This weekend, it's pouring rain out, so I've managed to get a little bit done. If you look at the sidebar, you'll see that the old categories have disappeared, and new ones have taken their place. As of this minute, I've only gone back and assigned new categories to a handful of posts, so only a few categories are currently live. The number will increase over the next few hours, as I continue to go back through the older material.

The new category arrangement should be somewhat self-explanitory, but I'll probably post something explaining it once I've re-categorized the majority of the posts. That's probably going to take a day or two - I've got over 350 posts up now, so even if I manage to do one per minute, I'm still looking at a few hours of work.

tqa Sat, 09/29/2007 - 11:07

Tags

personal

The Blog

Changes

tqa — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:36:35 +0000

Changes

I'm making a few changes to the left-hand sidebar for the blog this weekend. One of them is already in place - if you look to the left, you'll see a presidential election poll. It's linked to Newsvine's ElectionVine project. You can vote once a month, and if you play around with the widget, you can pull up different sets of results based on the entire project, not just this one site. (I cheerfully stole this idea from Joseph.) Later on this weekend, I'll be changing my blogroll a bit. I'm also in the process of re-working my categories, so expect to see some changes there, too.

tqa Fri, 09/14/2007 - 11:36

Tags

personal

The Blog

Good time to update your profile as well. It seems a little out of date, or is it? Are you still affiliated with UoH?