Just For Fun

This is the view from the window next to my desk at work. I like my job.

The past two days, I attended a career development workshop that was hosted by my university. It was great. I have all of these ideas swirling around in my head right now. I know without a doubt that I want to stay in the realm of academia. But in addition to that, I would love to do freelance medical writing. There are lots of different jobs associated with medical writing including helping other scientists write papers and grants, writing informational pamphlets, and writing science policy. While I do like writing papers and grants, I get my fill of that kind of writing in my regular job. If I'm going to do something on the side for fun, I'm more interested in what some people might call soft science (ie. writing about science topics for websites, newspapers, etc.). I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess I just want to put it on the record. I tend to forget about things like this - things I like to do instead of things I have to do.

Catch Up

I've been at a workshop on career development for the last two days. It was awesome, but my brain's a little fried. So... here's a quick bullet list of what's been going on.

• Harper got a new night light. I gave her the choice of these two and guess which one she picked.

To no one's surprise, she picked the princess one.

• My grandma will be 90 years old in October. And yet, she'll still jump on the back of a 4-wheeler. That is the definition of awesome.

• It was inevitable. My husband pulled me over last night. Good thing it was only to say hello and not because I ran a stop sign.

• Harper has a new best friend. A watering can.

They do everything together. She slept with it last night.

White Carpet Is Stupid

I had to go to a conference for work one night last week, which meant Rob and Harper got to spend some quality time together. Whenever the two of them hang out without me, Rob sends me cell phone pictures of their adventures.

I received this picture along with the caption "We may need more carpet cleaner!"

White carpet is stupid.

Prayer Request

My mom is having her knee replaced early tomorrow morning. If you're of the praying persuasion, would you please say a prayer that the operation goes well and that she recovers quickly. I would appreciate it.

These pictures are unrelated to the above, but I like them.

Hanging Out At The Zoo

Last Saturday, we got to hang out with some of our favorite people at one of our favorite places, the zoo. This is Sarah.

Pretty cute.

Sarah hadn't been to our zoo before, so Harper showed her the ropes. We saw some pretty cool animals...

including this monkey having a snack.

She looks innocent enough, but trust me, she'll bite your hand off if you come between her and her teddy grahams.

Next, Harper wanted to show Sarah the proper way to tame the animals on the carousel.

One must first pet the animal in order to establish trust.

Works like a charm.

Sarah was a natural.

Then, Harper taught Sarah how to feed the lorikeets.

Sarah is a quick study.

I just hope she didn't see Harper kiss the bird. That's an advanced technique that should only be attempted by professionals. (Yeah, two seconds after this shot was taken, she leaned in and kissed the bird!)

Yes it was unbearably hot and yes it was oppressively humid. But, we all had a great time. Can't wait to do it again.

Thanks to our friend, Steve (Sarah's Uncle), for taking all the pictures!

How She Rolls

Harper's class has been working on learning the alphabet. For every letter they study, they color pictures like this and hang them up on the wall in the classroom.

While I was surveying the class' artwork, I noticed that Harper's picture looked different from all of the other ones. The other kids colored all over the picture - inside the lines, outside the lines, you name it, they colored it. But Harper only filled in the polka dots

(and, as she explained to me, added some of her own dots at the bottom). I have no idea what this means. It just struck me as funny that hers was noticeably different than the other ones.

I Write Like...

I heard about this site on NPR last week and was excited to check it out. Basically, you copy and paste in a writing sample and it tells you what famous author you write like. This excerpt from an interview with the site's creator explains how it works.

Actually, the algorithm is not a rocket science, and you can find it on every computer today. It’s a Bayesian classifier, which is widely used to fight spam on the Internet. Take for example the “Mark as spam” button in Gmail or Outlook. When you receive a message that you think is spam, you click this button, and the internal database gets trained to recognize future messages similar to this one as spam. This is basically how “I Write Like” works on my side: I feed it with “Frankenstein” and tell it, “This is Mary Shelley. Recognize works similar to this as Mary Shelley.” Of course, the algorithm is slightly different from the one used to detect spam, because it takes into account more stylistic features of the text, such as the number of words in sentences, the number of commas, semicolons, and whether the sentence is a direct speech or a quotation.

I tried several writing samples - blog entries, emails, articles I'd written for scientific journals. Apparently, I write like Cory Doctorow.

I have to admit, I wasn't familiar with him. But after doing a little research, I can see why we might have a similar style. He's a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger. You can read more about him here.

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it's fun. Give it a try and let me know who you write like!