Vote for your favourite Research Blogs March 8, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me, science . Add a commentFollowing the Oscars news online reminded me that the voting for the Research Blogging Awards opened officially this week. Voting is only open to those registered with the site, but if you’re a blogger and you enjoy writing about peer-reviewed science, you should go sign up – immediately, if not sooner.
There are some great blogs up for awards and I will certainly cast my little vote in the categories where I have my favourites. This blog is a finalist in the category for Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, so if you like what you read here from time to time, consider voting for me. As well as $50 I’d probably get some kind of badge to put in my sidebar, and I totally want one of those. I think it would look really nice next to the Dopplr duck. Help me fill that gaping hole in my sidebar y’all.
See the list of finalists here and follow the link in the invitation email to exercise your democratic rights. If you need reminding of the research I’ve written about in the last few months, here are all my posts tagged “researchblogging”.
Awards season February 26, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me, science . Add a comment
The first few months of the year are traditionally awards season in the film industry, and in the blogging world it’s no different. I got back from a well-deserved and fabulous holiday a few days ago to discover I’m shortlisted for a Research Blogging award in the category of Best Research Blog in Chemistry, Astronomy or Physics. Yay and thanks judges!
Well done also to all the other finalists and in particular also to Martin Robbins’ Lay Science blog, which is a contender for the Best Lay-Level Blog – I’ll take a teeny bit of credit for that too. Martin is also up for Best Blog Post, go check out the nominated post here.
All members of Research Blogging will be invited to vote for their favourites in early March and I certainly intend to cast votes for my favourite blogs. If you want to be able to vote and write about peer-reviewed research, go sign up! I’d definitely like to see some more astronomy blogs on the site.
The future of .Astronomy February 12, 2010
Posted by sarah in: dotastronomy, me . Add a comment
Planning the next .Astronomy
Carolina and I just got back from the UK, where we met up with the rest of the .Astronomy organisers to tie up some loose ends and discuss the future of our little workshop. With a few noted exceptions, participants as well as organisers seemed to enjoy the conference, and we’re keen to build on that success and put together another event in 2010. So that led us to some important questions: where, when, how and who?
Explaining light, without words January 24, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, me, science . 1 comment so far
In my time in the UK I did quite a bit of astronomy outreach work – like public observatory tours, helping out with masterclasses for teenagers and a stint at the BBC – and found it a really enjoyable way of talking about my subject to lots of different people. As any astronomer with experience in these kinds of activities can tell you, the variety of people with an interest in astronomy is really amazing. Some are incredibly knowledgeable and spend hours at their own telescopes, some think it’s all a load of shit, others suspect “astronomy” is a government conspiracy, others yet are simply a bit curious about the odd-shaped building or dish thing they drive past every day. But it’s the kids who surprised me the most: they might just stand there looking bored, and then suddenly ask a question so insightful that you wish you’d thought to ask last week’s colloquium speaker.
A pretty picture of me January 7, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me . 1 comment so far
Ha! No, I’m not giving you an actual pretty picture of me – I may have a blog but I’m not that much of a narcissist. Two of my favourite online toys right now are Wordle and social bookmarking site Delicious, which I started using a couple of months ago as a way of keeping track of links and bookmarks. So far it works well for me and it integrates nicely with other applications I use, like Twitter and FriendFeed. I created a Wordle of my Delicious tags and despite having only used the site for a short while, the tags sum my science-related interests up pretty well (and it looks so attractive!). Click to see a bigger version.
Now apparently I just need to settle on how I want to spell “visualis/zation”!
