Reasons for not posting for a while

I’ve not been posting on my main site for a while. I guess the main reason is the house renovation. Follow this on my house blog. Secondly I’ve also been blogging for work. Nothing earth shattering, but it was about time.

In the meantime here’s a newt I found in the new garden:

Newt in the garden

I never noticed, but somebody rightly pointed out it is missing a leg. Poor thing.

By JOVE those dry protocols are all fancy!

As spotted on Sandra Porter’s never less than interesting blog here’s a wonderful idea to help you understand the science. A website devoted to visualising experiments/publications in video.

Journal of Visualized Experiments

I think you would do the site a great disservice if you described it as Youtube for the bench scientist, but in a way that’s exactly what it is. Except instead of inane comments (who reads Youtube comments?), it’s the publication, with enough information to repeat the protocol. Sometimes when reading a protocol, nevermind the sparse methods and materials of a paper, it’s hard to come to grips with some parts in enough details to do this yourself. Watching somebody do that is surely almost as good as visiting the lab, and surely a lot cheaper!