I made a video about not planting vinca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3JBtcSOyMM So seriously, don't plant vinca. I entered this video into the Fredrikstad Animation Festival. I've been entering animations into this festival since I was in graduate school. I had it as one of my life goals to be selected into this festival, even if it took… Continue reading Don’t plant vinca part 2
I went to the California Science Center, and guess what, there's a drawing of a kid from Siler City, North Carolina, hanging on the wall. Somehow, a drawing from one of the most random towns in North Carolina made it to a very busy area on the other side of the country. I'll bet it… Continue reading Siler City Fame
I took a film-making class while I worked at Rice University. I did not really "take" it, though, I more audited it. But I did a lot of work for it, until I quit with a month left. Here's why. First, Rice has some pretty cool creative classes. There's a class where every student is… Continue reading Film-making class at Rice University
I took time off after my PhD, and here's my thoughts on the matter: 1. I was very tired after my PhD concluded. I really wanted to rest. And this felt like a more important consideration than needing to find a job right away for the sake of being able to have a ready, assured… Continue reading Should you take time off after your PhD?
I have seen on Twitter the heart-ache for people in science communication who can't find full-time jobs with benefits. Well, I found two of them. So let me tell you how I did that. First, how did I search for job openings? I'm not very good at that, but one thing I did was to… Continue reading How I got two science communication jobs
AGU is a conference held in December each year, about a week before Christmas. AGU stands for American Geophysical Union. It's more interesting than it sounds, promise! Usually it's held in San Francisco. I've been a couple of time. This past December, I had three talks at AGU. Two were invited. I felt very special.… Continue reading My 2019 AGU talks
A protoplanetary disk is, in my opinion, a stupid word that means something very sweet ... it just means a solar system in its infancy, when it's still a baby, still developing. But instead of just calling it a "baby solar system" or, to be more regal, an "infant solar system", they had to christen… Continue reading My protoplanetary disk in Blender3D
I finished a new animated Twitter thread for work. This one is on planet collisions. Woah! You can see it here. It's nine tweets in all. I wrote about getting feedback on my animated Twitter threads earlier. I was sad because I was told about how bad and unpolished my work was. Well, after all… Continue reading Scicomm made polished, part 3
I discovered a new, tiny detail in Blender3D. It's a tiny thing that made a big difference. I was trying to make etches onto a cube with an image -- like engrave the image in. I wanted it to look like this: See, nice and clear! However, it was just looking like this: Much less… Continue reading Texture vs Point in Blender materials
I was bemoaning the apparent lack of polish in my science animations and not quite understanding all the criticisms, but now it's a few days later, and something has dawned on me. I remember now reading people's blogs, and them saying all all their photos are put through pre-sets in Lightroom. Meaning every photo gets… Continue reading Scicomm made polished, part 2
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