Some Changes, and Connecting with Facebook

Well, I’ve upgraded my Wordpress installation and since some plugins might be not quite working with the newest version, things are going to look slightly different for a bit. But not hugely so.

Oh, if you are on facebook, you might like to know that I have put Asymptotia on the NetworkedBlogs application so that you can sign up and get a feed directly within facebook. Click through to here if signed in. Please note the difference between me, my facebook page, my blog Asymptotia, and Asymptotia’s space on facebook. All four are different. I’m just sayin’. Don’t forget to keep visiting here, for example.

Strangely, as a result of upgrading a few things, something weird happened that I […] Click to continue reading this post

Pit Visit

I promised a report on last week’s College Commons trip to the Page Museum at the Tar Pits, here in Los Angeles. It was an excellent trip. The usual thing I do for blogging these things is, some time later, as time allows, I sit down and do a sort of brain-dump. I tried to do something different this time, and walk on the tour with my Palm Tungsten (yes, really really old technology, I know) and simply write a sort of narrative into it as I went along. Then I combined the uploaded file with the images I took as I went along, and supplemented with some extra sentences here and there. The overall effect should be a sketchier description of the event than I usually do, which may or may not be an improvement given that everybody seems to skim everything these days anyway. (Click on the photos for larger views.) So, here goes:

tar_pits_trip And so it begins. And it begins well – after a name tag is given out, upon check in for the bus, we are given a little brown paper bag of snacks. Hurrah!

3:39 and we’re off! (We run by the excavations for the Expo line and since it is an elevated bus, I get a nice view of what’s going on for quite a way. Wish I’d had the camera out to make a video for you.)

My colleague David Bottjer, a paleontologist, gives a little run down of the history of the region (both social and paleontological) as we go north on La Brea (appropriately – they are the La Brea Tar Pits… Or given that La Brea means The Tar, they are The Tar Tar Pits…)

4:05 We’re here! Somehow, the little bag of goodies is all empty already. Except for […] Click to continue reading this post