Update plus more media stuff
Well, it's been about 5 months since the whole PE thing, and by and large it's been pretty good, aside from the rat poison pills.
In the meantime, things have been going well, especially on the academic front. After a few false starts, I got all of the data collection for my 2nd thesis chapter done, and now just have to analyze it (which could and probably will take up to a year, depending on how fast and well I can get 3 different software programs to work together). My 3rd chapter has been much more frustrating, requiring almost 2 years of experiments prior to this to get it working, but now that it *is* working, I'm moving really, really fast. At this rate, I can do 3 species a month, and will quickly reach the point where I'm running out of frogs, which is far better than running out of time to test the frogs I have access to.
Also, one of my many side-projects is finally out the door: a paper describing the locomotion of brittle stars. Because they're such weird animals, the media picked it up (including Nature, Science, and several non-scientific venues). We made a CreatureCast animation for it here, and I did an interview for Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet show (starts at a bit after 3:00) with a colleague of mine who now hosts the show. There's also a hidden bonus in the interview for those of you who're gamer geeks.
In the meantime, things have been going well, especially on the academic front. After a few false starts, I got all of the data collection for my 2nd thesis chapter done, and now just have to analyze it (which could and probably will take up to a year, depending on how fast and well I can get 3 different software programs to work together). My 3rd chapter has been much more frustrating, requiring almost 2 years of experiments prior to this to get it working, but now that it *is* working, I'm moving really, really fast. At this rate, I can do 3 species a month, and will quickly reach the point where I'm running out of frogs, which is far better than running out of time to test the frogs I have access to.
Also, one of my many side-projects is finally out the door: a paper describing the locomotion of brittle stars. Because they're such weird animals, the media picked it up (including Nature, Science, and several non-scientific venues). We made a CreatureCast animation for it here, and I did an interview for Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet show (starts at a bit after 3:00) with a colleague of mine who now hosts the show. There's also a hidden bonus in the interview for those of you who're gamer geeks.