A couple weeks ago some of the Chickenhousemates trucked down to the coast for a summery weekend of snorkeling. I borrowed a wetsuit and discovered that it's a lot less terrifying than expected, once you get used to swallowing a little saltwater from time to time. The shallow waters on the SE coast here are full of tropical-looking fish, huge lazy ( Read more... )

Assorted gleanings from the last few weeks at life drawing. I've been so busy at work that I show up late to the studio every time, having missed everything but the hourlong pose at the evening's end.


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Just returned from the Aus Ent Soc meetings in Perth and ten days of fieldwork in beautiful Western Australia, including the Outback at its Outbackiest. It was amazing, here is a handful of photos 'til I can flickr them all up.

( BEETLES )

Oh my goodness, this month has been nuts-- an all-too-brief stopover at the ol' lab in Berkeley, good times (and great beetle talks) at ESA in Indianapolis, followed by a lightning-speed visit to Yale, for which I was justly punished by getting blizzard-locked at JFK on the 20th. SNOW! I forgot about that stuff (yet it still resulted in the ( Read more... )

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Well, "art" isn't quite the word for it. Our gleaming new lab building opened its doors in June, offering expansive bench space and fridges for all. Most importantly, every bench cluster has an associated whiteboard. When I found the board for the molecular systematics group, I immediately inscribed a small PCR Pirate, first sighted on the Will Lab ( Read more... )

My lovely officemate recently hosted a Ladies' Shiraz & Illuminated Manuscripts Night, just the thing for a chilly Canberra evening. I'm a little rusty on my knotwork, but here's a woman from some book of hours or what have you, plus birdflowers (bigger). Oh, I was fanatical about Celtic calligraphy as a first-instar teenager. On the Dork Spectrum ( Read more... )

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Foolin' around with the demo version of "Manga Studio" whilst waiting for MrModeltest to do his thing. (jModeltest would be great if it didn't spit out my partitioned nex files like Frank Bruni finding an earwig in his soup. Any of you biology nerds had success with partitions in this program?) I can't believe how realistic the brushes/nibs feel in ( Read more... )

Last week I took another ludicrously short trip to the US, to attend a wedding Back East, visit my littlest sister, and talk about iridescence research (of which more later). Not as jetlagged as I might be; I attribute this to having perfected Ultimate Planesleep, or at least a really passable way to snooze on a 777. It looks like this

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