Intermission [hopefully] over...

Hey guys,
Sorry about the lack of posting lately. Discovered that actual writing (ie not rambling blogging in my style) is kind of slow and painful and difficult, at least at the start anyway. First thing that happened when I got my chapter assigned was one hell of an epic writer's block. I spent hours staring at the damn outline. And being miserable. Thus I had to make up for it on the weekend...

Becoming easier, but still full of headbanging and frustration in places, especially where the field gets a little messy. The annoying thing about protist writing is the massive holes in the literature and instances of absolute chaos that no one's bothered to resolve since it transpired half a century ago or so. Like phantom species. And phantom cellular structures. And other phantom factoids. Being obsessive compulsive in a way, I feel obliged to investigate. Which eats up a lot of time, etc. Am trying to learn the art of ignoring not-quite-so-relevant literature. And the art of containing browser tab explosions...

Anyway, I should probably get back to blogging to keep my other stuff from getting too dry (or that's the idea anyway). Otherwise my other writing reads like ultrastructure descriptions. Middle ground between my style here and there would be awesome. (Right now I only have two settings of formality: bloggy and research papery. Grrr. Or, more accurately, zzzZZ.)

Anyway, some of you are probably sitting there snickering at this n00b. Meh.

Feel free to ask me anything about Hacrobians/"Craptophytes". Come on, I dare you =P


Just to keep track of what I need to do here eventually, in no particular order:

- reduce percentage of posts being about lack of posting...
- update Tree of Euks (prerequisite: learn shiny new toy Adobe Illustrator)
- finish part III of Constructive Neutral Evol series
- new Mystery Micrograph
- write up the 10 or so neglected past MMs
- Sunday Protists (maybe even on Sundays! *gasp*)
- Haptophytes (started writing up a mini-series on them)
- Neomura and Eukaryogenesis (Hahaha. Ha. Must read a couple more TC-S novels "papers" first...)
- Bacterial evol: comparing TC-S stories with trees and so on. Leaving that for later. Much later.
- Stomatal development + diversity (related to my old lab project; might as well share some cool tidbits before I forget completely)

Anything I missed? Hard to keep track of blogging obligations on top of everything else...

Coming up next: Dinos mugging ciliates for their stolen algal plastids. Which the latter dismembered and packaged up into neat little compartments.