Uncategorized » Gydle

Vancouver!

family, philosophy, Switzerland, Uncategorized, writing 11 Responses »

Dec 302012

I’m not dead yet! This may very well be my favorite line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail - it’s a close tie with Silly English kuhniggits! and Run away! Run away! Spoken with the proper accent, each phrase has served me well in response to a variety of situations I’ve encountered across the years. You might very well have wondered about my status, since my last post was about a month ago. I saw my trusty CTO Dave not long ago on a trip to the US, and the issue came up. Dave: You haven’t posted much to Gydle lately. Me: I don’t have anything to say. He shrugged, and that was that. Yesterday he sent me a comic from the Oatmeal that explains it much better than I did. Make sure you scroll down to the part that says “I’m a firm believer that if you don’t click here to read the whole dang post [...]

Did you read the manual?

humor, Uncategorized, writing No Responses »

Feb 152012

After a discussion about books and publishing at the monthly meeting of my writing group, my friend, fellow writer and book designer extraordinaire Sue Niewiarowski forwarded this video to the group. It captures the whole issue I wrote about last week much better than I did. Hilarious! I do believe we will evolve into the world of new media.

Oldies but goodies

Holy hairballs, Batman! It’s not junk after all!
Greetings from hibernation nation. I did say I’d come out if something really big happened. Guess what? One of my current scientific obsessions was Big News today! No, don’t go away – it’s not the microbiome. It’s my other obsession: junk DNA. I’ve written about it before, here and here and here. In a stunning “no doh?” development, a vast international array of researchers has discovered that the 99% of the human genome that was considered “useless junk” isn’t junk after all.
Let the conversation begin
Wow. It looks like I should turn this into a running blog, if the number of page views I got from that last post is any indication. Thanks for stopping by! Or maybe people just liked the image of me as a marmot. I ran twice this weekend – and both times I was clobbered with inclement weather. On Saturday I finished a long run in a cold rain, with salty water running down my forehead and into my mouth. After a run like that, a warm shower is such a comforting thing. Today I ran with a friend, and we were pummeled with hail for about ten minutes. We had a headwind, and it hurt. I pulled the collar of my fleece jacket up around my face to protect myself. By mile four, the sun had come out, my jacket was around my waist, and we were watching the click here to read the whole dang post [...]
10 reasons to get a good night’s sleep
Today is world sleep day. In celebration, I urge you all to drop everything and take a nap. As I mentioned back in April last year, research has shown that getting 8 hours of sleep a night is important for optimal cognitive function. We all know how crappy we feel when we’re sleep-deprived. Brain fuzz takes over. We start to yawn uncontrollably in an effort to oxygenate our exhausted neurons. Our eyes start hurting and feeling dry, prompting us to rub them for relief. Every horizontal surface starts to look attractive. But there is a lot more to it than just feeling lousy.
Fold It!
As I stand in the Lausanne train station holding a sign saying “Marcel,” the volume of passengers from platform 8 dwindles from a steady flow to a trickle to a stop. He probably exited the other end of the platform. I stay put like you’re supposed to when you’re lost. He was the 20-something computer geek. I’d let him find me. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he does. This amiable, t-shirt-clad student has come all the way from Zurich after his 8:00 class at ETH to show me how to play a protein folding game called FoldIt. The IT dude in my novel is a player, so I have to learn it, too. In EPFL’s Rolex Learning Center a half hour later, we quickly download the game onto my Macbook, since his HP is bugging, and he logs into his account. A list of protein puzzles appears, with names click here to read the whole dang post [...]
How to Swiss kiss
Bonjour! (Kiss, kiss, kiss)* Hey! (hug) Hello. Nice to meet you. (right hand extended, waist level) * language and number of kisses may vary These appear to be the accepted Western greeting rituals. But which to use? With whom? When? And how are they properly executed? It’s no big deal until you screw it up. One moment is all it takes to go from potentially interesting person to totally awkward inept proto-caveman. That first impression is everything, right? As an expat, this issue comes up frequently. Take the first time I delivered Brendan to the carpool point for his out-of-village soccer match, the year we were here on sabbatical. Turns out this was not a simple drop-off. Oh, no. People pulled up in their cars and then got out. The kids went around the whole parking lot kissing everybody – kiss, kiss, kiss. Left cheek, right cheek, left cheek. The click here to read the whole dang post [...]
10 reasons not to wear a tie
I was chatting with Dave this morning, and he mentioned he had an important meeting at work. So you’ll be putting on a tie? I typed. Morning humor. I’ll wear a nice shirt, but no tie, he responded. That got me thinking. Ties don’t make a lot of sense, but like makeup and pantyhose, they’re totally ingrained into our concept of “appropriate apparel.” The more I thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. I did a little investigating and have come up with ten good reasons for men not to wear ties. Pull this out next time someone says “dress code.” Ties are obviously phallic. It’s a big arrow pointing down at your crotch, saying “LOOK AT ME!” Who wears skinny ties? Short, fat ones? Bow ties? Losers. Are they losers because of their ties, or do they wear those ties because they’re losers? Best avoid the question altogether click here to read the whole dang post [...]
Inspiration
“There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.” – Pink Floyd Where do ideas come from? How many of us wake up in the morning and say, “Gee, I think I’m gonna to have myself a great idea today!”? Not me. In general, the harder I try to think up something original, the slower my brain goes until it ultimately screeches to a stop and I have to go play a game of Scramble or eat jelly bellies to get it going again.
Crowdsourcing, Part III
Saturday I wrote a post about how I wasn’t aware of what was going on in my body, and how unsettling that felt. So unsettling, in fact, that I wasn’t able to write the post I had been planning for several days, and had to gaze intensely at my navel for a whole weekend instead. That was probably a good thing, because it gave me some new insight into this post. Navel gazing isn’t all bad. Turns out there’s some pretty interesting stuff in there. As you’ll see if you read on. Last fall I translated an article by Daniel Saraga for Reflex Magazine about the gazillions of bacteria we have living on and in our bodies. The title (in English) was “Me, Myself and I – and a million other germs.” It should actually have been “Me, Myself and I - and 100 trillion other germs.” That’s right. A human click here to read the whole dang post [...]
Designer DNA Dinged
Who says scientists and writers can’t play God? My sister recently alerted me to a story in which science and literature intersect in a very bizarre way. It’s weird enough that I thought I’d pass it on. A little less than a year ago, maverick geneticist (and yacht owner) Craig Venter rocked the world (again) by announcing that he had created synthetic life. His team had developed a bacterial-like genome from DNA made in the laboratory. First, they ordered DNA pieces 1,000 units in length from a company called Blue Heron that specializes in synthesizing DNA. Then they used some helpful yeasts to weave it together (the first microbial sweatshop?). Finally, they put this new synthetic genome into a cell whose genetic material had been removed. The new DNA took over the cell and promptly started manufacturing its own proteins, rather than the proteins the original cell would have made. click here to read the whole dang post [...]
Crowd Pleasing
Humans are incredibly adaptable. We do all kinds of crazy stuff to ourselves, buy into all kinds of crazy ideas, and come out the other side just fine. I flew across nine time zones last Friday, and it only took me a day to adjust. I was up eating Jelly Bellies (thanks Dave) for breakfast at 5 am the first day, but after that I was on my normal schedule. After a couple of days, my brother lent me his car to drive into San Francisco. I surprised myself by feeling cramped driving in only three lanes of traffic. I started counting lanes after that, thinking about the difference between Oakland and Switzerland — between six lanes of madly weaving drivers on a mission to find the route of least resistance and two, maybe three lanes of drivers who wouldn’t dream of passing on the right (it’s breaking the law) click here to read the whole dang post [...]