Meet MacTavish

New morning ritual chez moi:

It’s very meta to post a photo of the draft version of this post
Yep, turns out the iPhone is a pretty powerful gateway drug. I’d already pretty much decided to get a Mac “at some point” (thanks all for your input!), but I was waiting for a freelancing/overtime (it’s complicated) cheque to come in first. Mr E Man knew all this… so when he came back from a shopping trip on Sunday and shouted “babe, do you mind if I give you your present early, and not wrapped?”, I didn’t expect him to thrust a MacBook into my hands! But he did… and I promptly announced that he could go and watch the hockey by himself, I was staying in to play with my new toy.
I’ve already had all sorts of fun with the trackpad and familiar programmes (internet, iTunes etc). I’ve got my free 30 day trial version of iWork to play with, plus iPhoto and all that good stuff, so I’ll watch all the tutorial videos over the weekend. Apparently the store where Mr E Man bought the Mac has a seminar for new Mac users on Saturday, which I should probably go to!
Expect lots of confused and/or excited posts/Facebook updates as I explore the new system…
Oh, and the name? When my younger sister was little, my Dad called her Tadger – Geordie dialect for young child / toddler. When we went on holiday to Scotland, he renamed her Tadger MacTavish. In France she was La Tadge, in Ireland she was Molly O’Tadge… that’s my Dad for you. But one name just stuck, and even though she’s now 30, my parents still ask me if I’ve talked to Tadger MacTavish recently. My sister has always been much cooler than me, so MacTavish seemed like a very apt name for my new toy.
Posted in family, photos, technology | 26 Comments

Return to Wonderland?

ScienceGirl (from Curiosity Killed the Cat) was kind enough to give me an Inspiration Award.


Thank you, ScienceGirl!

I do have to say though, that I am increasingly unsure of what to do with these things. I hate to sound in any way ungrateful, because it’s always a warm and fuzzy moment when a fellow blogger thinks of me for an award.

So what’s my problem?

Well, there are just so many of them that come around… and they all want you to pass on the award to 5, or 7, or 9, other bloggers… so do you continue to award them to your genuine favourites, or do you think “well, I didn’t include so-and-so last time, so she can have one this time”? Doesn’t that just devalue the whole concept?

So, I am going to bend the rules a little bit, and pass on this award to one blogger, and one blogger only.

I found her blog through a carnival, when I was excited to find a fellow virology geek and promptly clicked through to the original post. Then I read some more posts… and some more… and then the entire archives… and discovered not only a fantastic blog and an awesome blogger, but a fabulous community of commenters that I promptly joined. And who followed me home to my own blog.

That one click was the start of my journey through the looking glass and into the community to which I now belong. I’m going to repeat something I said in a recent comment thread, in case any of you missed it:

“I just want to say how much I value the little community that’s built up on this blog. When I first started to read blogs, I always preferred the ones where the commenters seemed to know each other, and talked amongst themselves, not just to the blogger. We seem to be getting there! Thank you all, and keep up the good work ;)”

So thank you, Mad Hatter, for introducing me to the original group of commenters who still drop in here and elsewhere!

And now, the cunning plan… Dude, I miss your blog! It makes me so sad to see it languishing at the bottom of my “most recent posts first” blog roll. And I am not the only one! So please, if you possibly can, pull off the dust cloths and polish the cups and saucers, it’s time to restart the tea party!

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If you agree, and you want Mad Hatter to start blogging again, leave her a comment on this thread… an avalanche of begging, pleading comments can only help! I see some of you have already started – good work!

Posted in blog buddies, meme, meta | 12 Comments

e-Ps and Qs

I’m a very polite person. As a Brit in Canada, I frequently apologise to people who stand on my foot on the bus; it’s a habit I just can’t seem to break.

As everyone knows though, email etiquette is a different, and very complicated, phenomenon.

Each week I send many, many email requests for information and documents. I am always polite, respectful of peoples’ time (unless the deadline is approaching with frightening speed), and explain exactly what I’m looking for, why I need it, and when I need it by.

I also receive many messages of this kind, from local and off-site collaborators and their assistants. Some are more polite, respectful and self-explanatory than others.

There are two common sign-offs on this kind of message. Both mean the same thing – “I really need this so you’d better send it ASAP”. The one I use myself is different to the one that I most commonly receive.

I’m not going to tell you which is which, but which of the following do you find the least annoying?

1) “Please and thank you”

2) “Thank you in advance”

Are there any other variants out there?

Posted in career, communication, English language | 24 Comments

The nature of network comments

After a lengthy period of faffing about on the internet intensive study, I have invented devised a statistical thingy what the hell is it called matrix to help my fellow NN bloggers predict the kind of comments they are likely to receive on a given post.

Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 45 Comments

Right, I suppose I’d better do a Darwin post


I am was an evolutionary biologist, after all.
Many happy returns, Chuckie D!
I wish that you only could see
The advances we’ve made
With genomics and spade,
And the state of our family tree.
Darwin’s original phylogenetic tree:

The current state of affairs:

(Both images are available in t-shirt form.)
Seriously though – how cool would it be to take Darwin through all the research that’s been done since his death?

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Editing blues (and reds)


(Clearer version on Flickr)

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments

Very Important Submission update

It has been submitted!

This was a Very Important accomplishment.

Luckily I don’t seem to be in any trouble (working until 8.30 pm on Monday to get the files uploaded seemed to help).

Conversations with my boss went as follows (with some paraphrasing):

Monday morning:

(Boss comes out of his office chatting to colleague about Very Important Submission)

Boss: “…so we’ll just adjust that last figure, and upload the files. Then we can all come and watch Cath hit the “Submit” button – for the SECOND time.”
Me: (facepalm)
Boss and colleague: (snigger snigger)

Monday afternoon:

(Boss hands me a USB key with the final files on it)

Boss: “Please can you upload these files? I’ll approve and submit”
Me: “Oh, good, because I’m too scared to touch the damn thing again”
(Boss laughs)
Me: “I’m really sorry about the whole thing, I was completely freaking out when it happened”
Boss: “Yeah, you freaked me out too. But it all worked out”
Me: “Yeah… I printed this poster off the BBC website on Wednesday”
Boss: “I think I need one of those too”

Thank you everybody for your (mostly) supportive comments!!!

And, for no particular reason other than “doesn’t this look a bit like the Union flag?”, here’s a photo of some melting snow on my friend’s truck yesterday. With added essence of finger at the top.

Posted in career, photos, snow | 19 Comments

Get angry for the right reasons

This is my contribution to the February APLS carnival. This month’s host, The Purloined Letter from the Green Phone Booth blog, has chosen a wide-ranging topic under the title “A Carnival of Nature“. I have chosen to focus on the following part:

“How has your experience with the natural world shaped your own environmentalism? Is love of the natural world an essential motivation for sustainability?”

To participate in February’s carnival, please submit your posts to aplscarnival (at) gmail (dot) com by February 13.

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The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) runs a high-profile advertising campaign that focuses on the annual seal hunt in Atlantic Canada. A series of very thought-provoking posters regularly appears on our local bus stops:

It was this kind of campaign that drew me into the environmental movement as a child. Raised on a diet of James Herriot and David Attenborough, I loved all things furry, feathery and blubbery. Before the 80s pop stars took over, my room was covered in posters of birds and beasts. On one of our regular Sunday family hikes on the North Yorkshire Moors, a glimpse of a falcon or a fox would make my entire week. And I would literally cry at images of whales and dolphins being slaughtered in Antarctica.

I joined the RSPCA when I was about eight, and Greenpeace when I was ten. I read all their newsletters avidly, and joined in their letter-writing campaigns. I had a Greenpeace t-shirt with a diving whale’s tail on it, and a sweatshirt with a picture of the Rainbow Warrior, and proudly wore the latter on a trip to France. For a time, I even wanted to grow up to be one of the Zodiak heroes who interfere with the hunt.

I’ve never lost this passion for the natural world. I love to get out into the mountains or onto the ocean and submerge myself in the sights, sounds and smells of the wild. The sight of an eagle or seal from a kayak is still a visceral thrill, and I was delighted to see a coyote in Whistler on Sunday. (The family of raccoons who constantly try to get into my roof can bugger right off though, I don’t care how cute they are).

Other things have changed though.

I’ve become much more aware of the importance of an animal’s habitat and ecosystem. The glamorous, photogenic species are just the tip of the iceberg – we can’t save the whales while ignoring the plankton. Systemic changes such as the warming of the air and acidification of the oceans are a threat at all levels. And, while I would have been cheering him along when I was a kid, who is multi-billionaire Paul McCartney to jet in to Newfoundland, telling people on welfare that they should give up their main source of income for the year? Yeah, that’s great in an ideal world, but it ain’t the solution in this one.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the seal hunt. And conservation efforts that focus on one superstar species do benefit the entire ecosystem; how much habitat has been preserved in Asia due to sanctuaries set up to protect pandas, or tigers?

But I think the true battle lies elsewhere.

The kind of poster that would really attract me these days might read as follows:

The entire planet is in crisis
And you’re worrying about a few seals
Get angry for the right reasons

(Cath presses “Publish” and waits to be flamed by animal rights activists. For the record, I’m sure the people who use cute cuddly critters as a call to arms are fully aware of the bigger picture. And I still think the Greenpeace dudes on zodiaks are heroes).
Posted in Carnivals, environment, nature | 27 Comments

Cancer stem cells: the wrong kind of controversy?

I attended my first ever Café Scientifique event last week. The venue could not be faulted – a brew pub with good food, outstanding beer, and a view of the harbour and the North Shore mountains. However there were a couple of barriers to the organisation’s stated aim of “promoting public engagement with science and […] making science accountable”.

Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

VWXYNot?: surprisingly, not quite as neurotic as some other blogs

I held off doing the personality tests that have been doing the rounds, mostly because I was worried that I would have an embarrassingly high neuroticism score (I am actually not kidding* – I am constantly doing battle against my stress-monkey, sweating-the-small-stuff tendencies).

But! It actually wasn’t all that scary in the end.

Here are my results from the Personality Patterns test I saw at Ambivalent Academic:

Events of this week might argue against the “competent” tag, but everything else seems reasonably accurate. People who know me in real life are welcome to disagree.

And here are my results from the Personality and Blogging test that I saw just about everywhere:

Neuroticism
Neuroticism (sometimes also called Emotional Instability) is the tendency to experience negative emotions such as sadness or anxiety. People who score high on neuroticism are vulnerable to stress and tend to experience negative feelings more often. People who score low in neuroticism tend to be less susceptible to stress, and experience negative feelings relatively infrequently.

You scored 28 out of 50. This score is higher than 59.6% of people who have taken this test.

Sweet! I am not the biggest stress monkey in the blogosphere. If this was measuring just anxiety, rather than sadness AND anxiety, I would have scored higher though – I am usually a pretty cheerful stress monkey.

Extraversion
Extraversion (or Extroversion) is the tendency to experience positive emotions and seek out stimulating situations. People who score high on extraversion tend to be active, energetic, and enjoy being around other people. In contrast, people who score low on extraversion, known as introverts, tend to be quiet, low-key, and are typically less involved in the social world.

You scored 40 out of 50. This score is higher than 81.7% of people who have taken this test.

Yay! Let’s go to the pub and celebrate! Ooh, hey, did I tell you that story about the time I went to the pub and something funny happened?

Yeah, I talk a lot… and I especially like telling stories… no-one is going to be surprised about this score. Although I do need some alone-time each week to preserve my sanity.

Openness to experience
Openness to experience is a general tendency to appreciate emotion, adventure, and unusual ideas or experiences. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, appreciative of art, and sensitive to beauty. People with low scores on openness tend to have more conventional, traditional interests.

You scored 43 out of 50. This score is higher than 60.9% of people who have taken this test.

I refuse to do the following though: rock climbing, bungee jumping, sky diving (well maybe a tandem), whitewater kayaking, downhill mountain biking, ski terrain parks.

Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is the tendency to show self-discipline and persistence. People who score high on conscientiousness tend to be persistent, responsible, and duty-driven, but are sometimes perceived as being overly perfectionistic and concerned with order. Individuals low on conscientiousness tend to show less persistence and may have trouble seeing things through.

You scored 32 out of 50. This score is higher than 35.8% of people who have taken this test.

ROTFLMAO

I have never, ever, missed a deadline. I have also never, ever, missed an opportunity to procrastinate. I even procrastinate about things I like doing. So, self discipline? Can I say “work in progress?”

Agreeableness
Agreeableness is the tendency to be sympathetic and cooperative towards others. People who score high on agreeableness strive for social harmony and value getting along with others. Disagreeable people tend to be more suspicious and hostile towards others.

You scored 43 out of 50. This score is higher than 86.8% of people who have taken this test.

No surprise – I hate conflict and confrontation more than almost anything, it makes me feel physically ill. (Even online, on occasion, if I’m heavily involved). Luckily though it doesn’t happen to me very often. So I can get on with trying to keep people happy at almost any cost. Actually that didn’t sound very good, did it? Let’s hope I don’t go postal one day. (Joke, please don’t send the Mounties round).

Right, that’s all for now, one more hour of work and then I’m off to Whistler. Keep an eye out for me on the webcams! Black pants, black and white jacket, oh actually don’t bother.

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*although a former colleague was when he told me that he wanted to do an assertiveness training course, but was too scared to ask the boss for the time off.

Posted in personal | 6 Comments