How I used to blog

Actually still use this method for Habitatnews:

From Kevin’s old podcast. Yep, his website is up and running, all recovered.

Was actually showing Kok Sheng MarsEdit.

Can’t keep a good man down…

Kevin bounces back, the front of the house looks good already while the insides and sidebar shenanigans are still under construction! Heh-heh, can’t keep a good man down!

So who’s worried?

Man down! Theory is the reason is MIA!

Ouch! Kevin is one of the 20,000!

He is still alive and kickin’ on Twitter, amongst other places.

See:

• “No reason for this theory,” by Vanessa Tan. VanTan.org, 19 Mar 2008.
• “Second mass hack exposed,” by Shaun Nichols. ITnews, 18 March 2008.

New Journal Club coordinators

Although I moaned about work today, I had to announce the new Biodiversity & Ecology Journal Club coordinators.

The briefing session gets shorter each year and this year I didn’t even move out of my chair to chat with them for ten minutes and grab a photo. Pity the background behind the girls doesn’t do them justice but it doesn’t really matter; their smiles took care of that.

With their post and the Her World feature that had Alvin responding in minutes (he knows the two pictured together), “The Biodiversity Crew @ NUS” blog is beginning to look a little perky.

Animal Behaviour module blog resucitated

It’s that time of the year again to teach animal behaviour to non-biology students. So the module blog gets revived as well. Right now I am posting links to content I mention during the lecture. Since it is a cross-faculty module, they must not be drowned in jargon-filled literature; they are not biologists so it’d be tiring.

But a mild glimpse at least is needed, so enjoyable and less jargon-ful papers are selected. Articles by science journalists are really helpful and videos, of course, are everyone’s friend. I too watched (*almost*) agape this afternoon as we watched Attenborough get a little to close to a roaring 3-ton bull elephant seal.

I can post from within MarsEdit after Kenneth found me the settings. Oddly enough I can’t get it to work on the G4 desktop in campus so I’ll check against this image when I am back there tomorrow.

The Russians are coming!

Why has Blogger turned cyrillic on me?

Unveiling the Department blog

I was asked to setup a blog for the department’s biodiversity group (a research focus) last year and eventually settled for WordPress after some consideration.

Here it is: nusbiodiversity.wordpress.com

I reconstructed a bare minimum from the short emails that our group head, Navjot Sodhi, sends out to help us stay informed about each other. I spiced it up a little with an image or two. I really got to fix that image on the template though. Nice as it is, its not suitable for a group of tropical biodiversity researchers!

Now that the site is up with a feel of what it can be like, a contributor from each lab is being added; I already have four recruits - hopefully they will find that it is easy to post once there is news

Well, here goes another experiment…

The Blogs et al. page lists links to photo albums, news sites and blogs including field journals. The latter is peppered with most of my recent students. It’s something I afflict them with in addition to their work; a little bit of communication. Some write more than others, and its surprising how useful it has been.

Ria Tan has announced this on WildSingapore News.

MBA evokes multiple photos on Keropokman’s photo a day

I was amused to see multiple shots of the MacBook Air on keropokman’s blog. He blogs from my part of the world in NUS and actually does post a photo a day, its mind boggling! In this post he has several views of the MacBook Air or MBA. It sure is interesting to look at in a familiar setting.

The main question on my mind really is - how long does the battery last? Spoilt after years of using a 4.5 hour battery on a 14.1″ iBook, the short life of my heat-generating MBP drove me crazy.

Right now the MBP feels like its down to less than an hour. Even if it dies I will hold out for the NewerTech battery which has been “coming soon” for months now.

Updating the Marine Biology blog

I’ve updated the LSM4261 Marine Biology module blog since the lecture on Nekton today. Tried to do it immediately after the lecture as usual, but had to help out with some interviews. Thankfully Joelle and Z were around to dig up some food from Ecolab to feed me with. Amazing what they could uncover, but I just needed a quick snack and topped it off with a slice of Cyn’s Christmas cake!

Kevin chanced upon this lecture by Tierney Thys when he was viewing TED last December. He alerted me (thanks dude!) and I tucked it away in my del.icio.us links for use today. Tierney Thys makes an excellent presentation and touches on several aspects that we had discussed earlier. It was also a way to introduce the students to TED. Watch the video, you’ll find it fun and informative! [link].

I also added the welcome news from last year about the confirmation of South China Sea forays by the tropical Asian catfish, Pangasius krempfi - yes it is anadromous, like salmon! The researchers had to figure out a smart roundabout way to prove this and there are links to the story behind the paper in the post as well. [link]

Why not Blogger?

I experimented with WordPress for my Götheborg stint in December 2006 just to put it through its paces. I loved that I did not have to figure out the code for the umlaut then, but was otherwise not sure what the appeal was. Still I switched Raffles Museum News over to WordPress before handing over then reins in July 2007.

It took a cross-examination of Kenneth for me to figure that out that the deciding factor was the ability to add pages!

So when the NUS server was down on the morning of the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore and I was sick and stuck at home, I decided to blog. But I knew I would need a page to reflect results as well. So I revved up coastalcleanup.wordpress.com on the morning of the cleanup (Sep 2007). That worked out really well.

So the same month, I transferred over the Toddycats blog - this will see the best use of pages eventually when each programme is reflected by its own page.

So what would my pages on this ‘ere blog be about?