Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

The joy of an old, forgotten photo

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

The dog of physics blogger Chad Orzel has a lot more to say about science than my little dog ever bothered to let me know about.

Chad Orzel’s dog on classical mechanics: “Classical mechanics is like a good bone. You can chew it, and chew it, and you think it’s all used up, but then you come back, and you can still chew it some more.”

My dog Marianne on classical mechanics: “Wow, I fell off the couch — again!”

Marianne would have loved virtual bunnies made of cheese.

A pound of sugar and a pint of beer

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine,
photo by Amity Wilczek.

That was the daily diet of the wasp colony that built this huge paper nest in 1857.

Before you envy this self-indulgent diet, bear in mind that the wasps got their sugar dissolved in their beer.

This magnificently well-fed colony soon drew the attention of nearby wasps, who abandoned their own nests and moved in to help build the ever-growing mansion. They were welcomed “without the least show of opposition,” says the exhibit label.

So if you plan to write up the history of open-source software or BarCamp, please give appropriate credit to these pioneers.

(For more information, see a closeup of the label.) It’s now on display in Oxford’s Museum of Natural History.

Geeks can haz artistic photo effects

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… especially when geeks take photos in low light and then enhance the heck out of their dark materials.

Oxford Geek Night last night was an interesting blend of Meetup with short but excellent unconference.

The Wikipedia “unconference” article seems to have been hijacked by proponents of exactly one specific brand of (un)conference.* But I think Kaliya Hamlin captures their essence and history quite a bit better:

The name “unconference” arose to describe conferences that step outside of the more traditional model — that is, presentations selected months beforehand, sponsors buying speaking slots, boring panels of talking heads, and high fees.

Gobion Rowlands talked about his company’s science-based Flash game “Climate Challenge” — I would have liked to hear more about the Flash and less about the company, but when keynotes are chopped down to only 15 minutes something has to go. (That’s because I’m working on a Flash game right now–I bet lots of the people there are thinking of their own startups and thought Gobion’s talk was absolutely perfect.)

Jon Hicks packed his 15 minutes with really useful “steal this idea” ideas about building a website “From Design to Deployment.” He also, bless him, posted the slides (pdf).

The five–minute talks, with countdoown clock, are also cool.

Only bad thing is that there are, by far, not enough chairs. I was surprised when I got there (early) to see that very few geeks had brought their own computers. By the time the talks started, with at least half us geeks standing up for all two plus hours, I understood why the laptops had been left at home.

* Update — since I didn’t like what Wikipedia said on “unconferences,” I dredged up some references (they supported my POV) and amended the article. But who knows what you’ll see now if you click this link?

English Sunday traditional roast beef with Yorkshire pudding just got multiple updates–from a bright orange Mexican plate to the colorful veggies, steamed lightly to please modern taste buds.

But this photo is symbolic–not so much of what I’m eating as it is of the too-many too-tempting things distracting me from my current blog troubles.

Aside from Gilbert and Sullivan, lectures on Darwin, springtime in Iffley, work on my book, trying to set up a non-fiction writers’ workshop, and the glories of Oxford Botanic Garden, there are distractions less delightful taking up far too much time…grocery shopping with no car, just for a starter.

And then there are cross-cultural gotchas, like the dry cleaner who phoned to tell me that somehow he’d broken all eight buttons on my best jacket. He did pay for ten new buttons and sew them on free, but I did have to go find them in a tiny second-floor sewing store on a small back street.

Do less, write more–what a good plan. I plan to try that plan now.

1958 dog party, part 2.

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

“My phone doesn’t have a business model. Neither does my porch. I still like having a phone and a porch because they help me meet new people and communicate with people I know. Same with my blog and podcast.”

That’s a quote from Dave Winer…thanks, Dave, and not least for sending me back to this old Flickr porch photo of mine, a dog birthday party, 1958 or thereabouts. Here’s a better photo of the same party.

My mother holds a tray of raw hamburger to treat our neighborhood dogs, because my mostly-spaniel Suzy was having a birthday.

Yes, in those innocent days before Big Agriculture discovered that cows could be fed plastic pellets and ground-up carrion, nobody had yet invented “mad cow disease.”

I guess that’s a digression–but hey, that is my blogging model!

The newspaper “Voice of Galicia” sounds sweet this morning, with a story by Kiko Novoa. Novoa enjoyed my account of “The end of the classical earth” and calls me “la conocida periodista estadounidense Betsy Devine.”

The deservedly well-known Galician journalist Kiko Novoa adds a quick, charming, colorful explanation of blogging:

Betsy dispone de un blog (http://betsydevine.com/blog/) en el que comparte sus experiencias con los cibernautas.

Roughly: “Betsy has a blog, in which she shares experiences with the cybernauts.”

Welcome, cybernauts! And thanks to Jorge Mira Pérez for calling my attention to Kiko Novoa.

Corbett Court, Mitchelstown

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Dave Winer has been improving the New York Times for as long as I’ve known him. First he convinced them to put stories out in RSS–then to let bloggers “permalink” down into their archives.

Now he’s propagating their work in a skinnied-down format he calls a newsriver, where (to quote Dave), “The stories age, and are removed after 24 hours. After all this is news, not olds. “

Playing on this, Doc Searls says news organizations should “jump in the river”:

News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It’s what’s happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened.

Yes, of course readers also want well-written stories with careful analysis. But when we’re anxious to know what’s happening now, we don’t want that information slowed down and jumbled up with lots of stuff we don’t care about.

When I’m starving for a hot quick Egg McMuffin, I don’t want to wait for some Oeuf au Jambon de Ronald.

Memory Map – New Orleans

Originally uploaded by Patrick Houlihan

Where was the house that you lived in when you were seven?

If you know the address, you can find that house with Google maps, zoom in on the neighborhood that you remember, and download a satellite photo for yourself.

Then, upload your photo to Flickr (an account is free) and use the “Add notes” feature to draw little boxes around places you want to comment on.

If you want to see what other people have done with this, check out this Flickr search for memorymap + hometown.

Photorecipe: Schrödinger tomatoes

Originally uploaded by funadium

Some nights it’s almost too hot to think about food–except for maybe something cold yet spicy like Funadium’s latest photorecipe.

Disclosure–I blogged another Funadium photorecipe, some fusilli called “Waves and particles” and he mailed me some fun Funadium swag from Italy. That was a surprise, not something I was expecting, and I don’t crave more swag for any future blogpost. I just try to blog stuff I think blogreaders will enjoy.

Why are these chili-topped tomatoes named after Erwin Schrödinger? Read the explanation yourself, but try not to lose your appetite when you get to the part about chocolate with bruschetta!

Frank and Betsy and a bit of CMS

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

File this under W for Wow-I-never-thought-I’d-see-this.

Big article in today’s NYT on the interplay of science discoveries and wild rumors. And…blogs are a big part of the current “God-particle” kerfluffle.

“It is exciting even if you think the chances of it being true are only 0 or 10 percent,” said Tommaso Dorigo, from the University of Padua in Italy, who helped spread the D Zero rumor in June on his blog, A Quantum Diaries Survivor.

Wow, the NY Times expects its readers will know what a blog is.

I do wish, though, that science articles didn’t lean on sports metaphors so heavily. The exciting thing about the Higgs boson is the science, not the “race” to be first to see it.