Good day everyone and welcome back to my blog. I’m sure you’ve been wondering “where’s Jimmy gone?” That is, unless you’re one of the many people who sees me on a regular basis…
In any event, I am not a summer person. Summer has the effect of really slowing me down…too hot to work out, too hot even do much thinking, so I mostly have just been sitting on my duff. All that said, I still got a few things done recently.
First of all, I HAVE actually gotten some blogging done. I’m still writing a few articles a month for Bright Hub. I have never really enjoyed “SEO baiting” types of assignments, but I think Bright Hub has set it up so the experience feels less like selling out and more like a network for answering questions that people may Google.
My writing for Geeks Are Sexy has decrease a bit (I think it’s just cyclical…sometimes it’s nice to take a little break), but I also got one story out for them as well. I tend to write in order to AVOID work, so when I have little to do, I tend to slack off on blogging itself. Hopefully once I’m nice and busy again, the freelancing will be a nice little diversion.
Here’s the latest:
For the most part, the rest of my time has been spent puttering about in the lab. Working in a lab over the summer can be tough because sometimes your experiments kind of hit a wall and you can’t figure out how to move forward. I’ve spent a lot of time reading protocols or trying to make found protocols work in real life. Thus far about half of the stuff I’ve tried has worked and the others just give me nothing!
The semester (and my move into new housing) is fast approaching though, so I should be neck-deep in new responsibilities fairly soon. I’m ready for summer to be over and for autumn to rush in and take its place!
August 6th, 2010
Posted by
Jimmy Rogers |
Blogging/Writing, General News, Grad School, Science |
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Well today was a pretty tiresome day for me personally. Where I would have rather have been researching and obsessing over WWDC’s iPhone launch (look for my take on that later), I was instead trapped in a body shop and then a auto repair garage getting all of the many things that are wrong with my car fixed. Even so, here’s my take on two recent movies:
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Review)
A few weeks ago, I saw Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I have to say I was very impressed. While it was certainly not the greatest movie of all time, for a video game movie it did very well. I’ve never played the game upon which it was based, but I found the plot very interesting and approachable.
The action sequences were great and many of the chase scenes mirror (some very closely) the chases in the animated Aladdin movie of yesteryear. As a child of that time period, these chases had a very strong appeal. Think throwing apples at bushy-bearded guards with scimitars and you’ll generally get the idea. Oh and it always helps when the leading man and lady are both fairly attractive!
I would have to say there is some complexity in the plot, but only from the mystery and sharp turns in the plot, not from any deep philosophy. That being said, it’s nice to have a fun action/adventure movie unburdened by the dark overtones or deep psychology that has become some common among modern movies. Also, it’s family friendly without losing its edge. Definitely see it with friends or family before it leaves theaters!
Splice (Review)
Also in the theaters this week was Splice, starring Adrien Brody. I saw it with @jbrown915 on Friday and it’s hard to even describe this one. The story follows a couple of scientists (both in the plural and dating sense of the word) who are working on creating new life forms. This iteration of “artificial life” (which might be better described as “synthetic life” because it just borrows from nature) combines the genes of several different organisms to form these gelatinous blobs. These early creations don’t look very good, but they produce proteins important for pharmacology. Things go awry when they add in human DNA and all of a sudden things get out of control.
My first big problem with this movie is that ALL of the science is essentially a distillation of public misconceptions about genetic science. They make most of their discoveries over the course of a busy week (which pushed forward the idea that “scientists just need to work harder!”) and it also proposes that there is something magical about human DNA. For some reason splicing in DNA from people is WAY harder than DNA from closely related mammals, and once they succeed, it turns into a horrible humaniod monster!
The real reason NOT to see this movie is the middle to second half of it. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers to the poor souls who subject themselves to this film, but essentially the female lead develops this VERY creepy maternal complex that her boyfriend (husband?) never notices. After this, the plot begins to follow the same lines of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, only with graphic detail where the cult classic leaves much to the imagination. The circumstances, stupidity of the characters, and the incestuous suggestions really take the more visceral scenes way beyond the pale of a normal scifi thriller and into the realm of “why did I pay to watch this?” Overall, unless you’re needing a feature film that feels like two B movies crammed together, skip Splice and don’t even rent it.
Hope you enjoyed my doling out reviews and general wisdom. Let me know if you agree OR disagree in the comments!
[Prince of Persia image from Walt Disney Pictures | Splice image from Gaumont]
June 7th, 2010
Posted by
Jimmy Rogers |
Geeky Stuff, General News, Movies, Science, Scifi, Technology |
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Contrary to popular belief, things DID happen to me during the downtime of my site. Here’s a few examples…
School pretty much finished up until Fall. My TAship is paused until I teach (probably) micro lab again, so I have all kinds of time to focus on the lab. I also finished my unnerving but nonthreatening genetics course with a B. Overall I guess it was a good semester, though mostly because it was much less hectic than the first.
I HAVE done a little internet-related work. Mostly writing articles for GeeksAreSexy.net again. This time I created Science Is Sexy: What’s The Big Deal About Synthetic Life? and REVIEW: Is Betterment.com Really a Better Way to Grow Your Money? It was nice to get writing again and find something I genuinely wanted to write about.
My lab work is going really well! Thus far I have created a very successful transformant (a kind of genetically modified bacterium) and am currently working on deleting a gene from that bacterium. If I can remove a gene and then replace it with my modified version, I’ll have essentially completed the “mutation and rescue” paradigm of molecular genetics. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.
As an added treat for those interested in the above, here’s a picture of said transformant (the change is that one of its proteins is now fluorescently marked, so this is a fluorescent microscopy image), click it for a large view:
Right now the above bacteria are being a bit stubborn about giving up their genetic material (I mean I only want to blow up their outer layers and strip out their identities, geez!) so I’m cycling through a number of techniques that SHOULD be helping. Thus far, no luck. It’s still nice to feel like I’ve already done SOMETHING in lab this season.
As it goes with magic…I am kind of taking a little break. Hobbies are only fun when you’re mentally engaged. Just like my writing, sometimes the activity gets a little stale and I need some time away so I can miss it. I’m pretty much just in maintenance mode…I still carry cards and can entertain a bit, but not a lot of new stuff is coming out at the moment. I think it’ll probably pick up in Fall (also, Summer is horrible for card magic…humidity and “stickiness” are no fun for paper).
Lastly, on a pop culture note, I just saw Prince of Persia and LOVED it! If you would like to see Disney’s Aladdin in live-action form, this is the movie for you. The plot is pretty compelling too!
I’m so glad all this registration nonsense is behind me. Now I can just get back to guilting myself into blogging at a regular pace!
["Stand Back" image from XKCD]
June 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Jimmy Rogers |
Blogging/Writing, Geeky Stuff, General News, Grad School, Magic, Movies, Science |
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Here’s a look at my usual schedule during the busy times of grad school:
6:30-7:30am
Awake repeatedly to multiple alarms (needed from lack of sleep).
8am
Leave for school
8:30am
Begin prep for the lab I TA (Microbiology)
9:05-11am
Teach the lab and handle the 20 things that will unexpectedly go wrong
11:10am-11:50
Grab some lunch at the food court (while tasty and filling, not too nutritious)
12-3:30pm
Work in the lab doing a number of protocols including enzyme digests, PCR, bacterial cell culture, and numerous gels (did most of those)
3:30-4pm
Chat with other grads waiting for class to start
4-6pm
Take graduate Genetics (looking at gene expression in detail)
6:15pm
Head home in medium traffic on Rt. 1
The rest of my evening involves a combination of dinner, grading papers/project/exams, reading several journal articles (avg. length 10 pages), and diverting myself with Hulu. It should be noted that Twitter and podcasts permeate the whole day.
At about midnight (hopefully) I get to bed and wake up around 6am for the first time, clocking in about 5 hours of total sleep…starting the whole saga over again.
Overall, a very stressful way to be…part teacher, part student, part experimental scientist. At least it’s never the same two days in a row!
March 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Jimmy Rogers |
General News, Grad School, Science |
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Wowee I have been so super busy since my last update. More details on that in a bit, but first I have a neat announcement!
A couple weeks ago it my editor over at GeeksAreSexy.net (for whom I freelance occasionally) asked me if I wanted to do an interview with Discovery. I was surprised at first that they would even know we existed, but it turns out that all of our sciencey stories over the last year have come to the attention of one of their podcasts.
The Discovery News Friday Feedbag podcast takes a few science stories each week and discusses them in a casual atmosphere. They have a growing listener base and one of those loyal listeners forwarded our site to them. Last Thursday (after quite a bit of planning and then snow and then more planning) I chatted with them via telephone on the show. It was an incredibly fun experience and I’m glad that new media gives me a chance to share it with all of YOU.
Here’s the link to the podcast’s episode page….or if you don’t want to subscribe on iTunes, right-click and save this link to get the MP3 file. I’m about 1 minute into the file. Also here’s our announcement about it on GeeksAreSexy.
Aside from being famous on the internet I’ve mostly been hard at work in grad school. I have gotten a little closer to understanding my research project and ran my first successful PCR (which I got right on the first try). If you don’t know what that is, just think of it as a complex chemical reaction which occasionally decides it’s not going to work at all!
Classes have been pretty interesting this semester, as they are significantly more microbially centered. I’m really enjoying Microbial Pathogenesis, despite it’s 8AM meeting time.
On Friday I saw a talk by Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV. While I already knew the story of the virus pretty well, I was impressed by how amusing some of his personal stories were.
Lastly I’ve been helping out with new grad student recruitment and look forward to meeting the second batch of applicants next week.
February 28th, 2010
Posted by
Jimmy Rogers |
Blogging/Writing, Geeky Stuff, General News, Grad School, Science, Web Culture |
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