Excerpts of an old 'lab notebook'

I got my first microscope for my 9th birthday. Soon afterwards, I discovered pond water, and the true character of scum. I found exactly how to satisfy in me the innate thirst for alien worlds we all share. All one needed was a change of scale. I also happened to be quite obsessed with insects at the time...

I recorded everything, especially since I didn't have a camera and wanted to remember everything I saw. This introduced me to the scientific method. Naturally, being a naïve 9-year-old, you think you're making some earth-shattering discoveries and painstakingly record and cherish your data. Looking back, it's rather primitive... but still, I remember being proud of some of those drawings!

In a way, those were the golden years when most of my intellectual progress happened. Afterwards it all kinda goes bleh, and real life tries its damn hardest to knock all the creativity out of you. Wish I'd done much more then...

I took the photos in a hurry since the notebook is at my parents' house... excuse the crappy quality, and try to enjoy! Oh man, what a nerd...






I may redo this post once I get better pictures...

Writing drought lifted...

Apologies for disappearing for a while. Some incidents in my personal life have interfered with my writing. Should be back in the mood again, and hopefully can finally get the protist stuff on the road... until the next roadblock anyway.

Oh, and guess who gets to see James Randi on Monday! =P

Start-of-term shitstorm

Sorry, guys... behind on my Eukaryote Biodiversity posting... got caught up in a LOT of madness related to 6 courses and some very horribly neglected research. Tonight would've been great, had I not been subject to diethyl ether vapours for about 3h in o-chem lab, thereby making me veryyyyy sleeeeeeepy...

Daniel Dennett came to speak at our university last night. His talk was great (on memetics and 'Darwin's Strange Inversion of Reasoning')... needs a discussion post as well, but not on a mind full of ether. Apparently this is gonna happen in every o-chem lab, so once a week.

Actually the ether effects are subsiding, but I'm still lazy and tired. And I have a review paper to read for tomorrow morning. I'm on page 2...

Towards the middle of the term I tend to adopt a progressively more liberal attendance policy (skip class), so this shitstorm should subside into a brief calm soon...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2009, everyone!

Vancouver is thoroughly covered in snow! As a former resident of Toronto, I get plenty of entertainment watching the locals become completely stumped by pieces of frozen water. Not that the Torontonians deal with it much better -- counting down the days until winter ends is no way to consider yourself adapted to the climate -- but at least they've invented the plough by now, which sets them approximately 9000 years ahead of Vancouver.

It's quite beautiful and nearly surreal, the marriage of the mountaneous and maritime great Northwest with the undeniable purity and beauty of proper (snowy) winter. If only we could get some frost here; say, -15 or -20. That'd be nice. Mwahaha.

I hope to get some pictures tomorrow, to share the enjoyment. If it doesn't all turn to slush by then -- the inevitable and fast-approaching fate of Vancouver snow. It makes me quite sad... for often the snow has barely lived a day before it must turn to mush, and end its ephemeral existence so ungracefully. Sometimes the snow is born from the skies an ungraceful slush, and clings to your every footstep, begging to be accepted as the real thing. But you trudge on through the muck, stepping on the pleading slushiness of the bastard child of rain and snow -- a mere hybrid, not to be accepted as one or the other. And then you get wet. Thus killing the whole poetic-ish mood of the scene, as I have here.

I had some plans for 2009 blogging -- namely the celebration of evolution and biodiveristy by going through each of the phyla on the Keeling et al. 2005 tree. That's rather ambitious, I must admit; and I'm rather lazy and undisciplined. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully not as bad as trekking along Vancouver's sidewalks these days. Seriously...