Monday 11 March 2013

Oh oh oh .... caught in a bad project

Last week saw the submission of another grant (ARC Discovery Grant). Continuing on with the need for humour while surviving grant writing, this post highlights one of my favourite videos on YouTube. Bad Project is a parody of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. I think many scientists can relate to the situation in this video. In fact, I like to say one my most important career skills was the ability to avoid "Research Projects from Hell".

Anyway this parody song not only has surprisingly good production values but has great lyrics, I always find myself singing-
Blot, Blot Western Baby, Figure One will be Amazing.
Blot, Blot Western Baby, Transfer- this exposure's hazy
Blot, Blot Western Baby, Got no bands this shit is crazy

I also love the box of eppendorf tubes labelled in Thai, reminds of a scientist I used to work with who labelled everything he worked on in Hebrew.



Friday 1 March 2013

Microbial Lifestyles turns One!

It was exactly one year ago that I started this Microbial Lifestyles blog. With help from Martin Ostrowski and Sophie Mazard in my group, this last year has seen 63 blog posts. It's been fun, but also a struggle at times finding the time to write. It's been interesting which posts have generated alot of traffic and which remain unseen by everyone except my relatives and cats.

I do feel I've left alot undone that I had planned to do. For example, while I posted on how Science is portrayed in Games, this was supposed to be first post in a series on how science is portrayed in movies, tv, novels, etc. I seem to still be waiting on inspiration for those topics. Another example- I posted on my Reflections on five years at Macquarie University #1; we're still waiting on posts #2 and #3 in that series, and if I don't hurry up they will be "Reflections on six years".

Hopefully, we can see progress on these in year 2 of Microbial Lifestyles.


Happy Birthday!