Hello OT!

Hello World! Or more specifically, Hello Occam’s Typewriter bloggers and readers!
Actually, “Hello World!” sends shivers down my spine; after a hiatus of 20 years since learning Fortran and Pascal in university, my 8 year old son coaxed me back to learn programming with him—a terribly user-unfriendly language called “C” (at least for novices like myself), and every exercise began with the ritual “Hello World” being used.

Well, I was advised to delete the “Hello World!” post: (Welcome to Occam’s Typewriter. This is your first post. I suggest you delete it else you’ll look a bit of a prat.) As I do not want to appear like a “prat” on my first blog on “NO COMMENT”, I deleted this post.
Thanks, Richard, for the sound advise!

I do want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the wonderful welcome and great interactions that I’ve been having these past few weeks as a beginner-blogger—I am really enjoying this, and feel quite “at home”. This is at once a thought provoking and entertaining site, and I’m honored to have an opportunity to make my own modest contributions now on “NO COMMENT”.

Just a brief note about how I arrived here at OT. Several months ago in the course of self-publishing my first novel, I summoned up the courage to e-mail Jenny and ask a few questions related to my novel and to the Lablit site. Why “courage”, you might ask? Well, by now some of you may be familiar with a few of my recent posts, but we are all only “virtually acquainted” (except for Jenny, a fellow cell biologist who I had the pleasure of meeting at ASCB in Philadelphia last month). In person, I am not an especially social person (I can imagine my wife’s laughter as she reads this understatement!). Actually, I did not expect a famous author like Jenny to even reply. Well, fortunately for me, she did—within minutes!

At that point in time I had heard of Twitter and Facebook, but had not a clue what they were. People were constantly referring to the ‘social media’, and I could see those little icons—but what did they have to do with me?

Slowly I became involved in some of the forums on Lablit.com, and when it was suggested that I begin to Tweet, I tried. At first, I was not impressed. After a day, I was being followed by a local hair salon, what looked to be an escort service, and a dog breeder. I couldn’t understand what people were writing. I commented once at a Lablit forum that 98% of the Tweets I read seemed silly. I was advised that I was following the wrong people—turns out that this was good advise. I am now a convert.

So I first learned of OT’s existence through Twitter, not really understanding what exactly was going on—until Jenny explained the situation to me in Philly. When I first logged onto OT, it was love at first site. And here I am! Thank you, World!

About Steve Caplan

I am a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska where I mentor a group of students, postdoctoral fellows and researchers working on endocytic protein trafficking. My first lablit novel, "Matter Over Mind," is about a biomedical researcher seeking tenure and struggling to overcome the consequences of growing up with a parent suffering from bipolar disorder. Lablit novel #2, "Welcome Home, Sir," published by Anaphora Literary Press, deals with a hypochondriac principal investigator whose service in the army and post-traumatic stress disorder actually prepare him well for academic, but not personal success. Novel #3, "A Degree of Betrayal," is an academic murder mystery. "Saving One" is my most recent novel set at the National Institutes of Health. Now IN PRESS: Today's Curiosity is Tomorrow's Cure: The Case for Basic Biomedical Research (CRC PRESS, 2021). https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B006CSULBW? All views expressed are my own, of course--after all, I hate advertising.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to Hello OT!

  1. rpg says:

    Welcome, Steve!

    It’s good to have you here.

  2. steffi suhr says:

    Welcome Steve! Good luck and lots of fun with the shiny new blog 🙂

  3. Frank says:

    Welcome from me too. That’s an interesting journey you describe; coming to science blogging via your literary activity rather than via your science. It can be a bit of a roller coaster and there always seems to be some new tool/toy to play with but, but there’s also usually someone on hand to give advice.

  4. cromercrox says:

    Welcome aboard, Steve.

  5. Cath@VWXYNot? says:

    Welcome, Steve!

  6. Welcome – I could hardly have begun a comment any other way, correct?

    The more you use the different services, the more you see that nothing is permanent except the fact of human interactions. The vehicle isn’t very important. Have a good time, meanwhile, and make some good word strings for us, okay?

    • Steve Caplan says:

      Thank you Heather–I guess there are other ways to begin a comment, but “Welcome” is as good as any!
      I’ll do my best with the “word strings” (no strings attached, eh?)…

  7. ricardipus says:

    I think I said “welcome” or words to that effect on one of your other posts, but let’s put it here, too, since this seems to be where it belongs. 🙂

    C… ewww. I am surrounded at work by a group of people who program in C, or C-plus, or C-plus-plus, or C# as it’s sometimes called, not to mention Java, J2E, Perl, R, Tomcat and goodness knows what else. It’s all (proverbially) Greek to me. I’m hoping you decide to keep your blogposts in prose rather than code… 😉

Comments are closed.