Category Archives: asymptotia

A Hole in the Blog

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Definitely time for a gin and tonic, a long groan of exasperation, and a lie down on the sofa.

As you can see by scanning down the page (if you’re a regular), all the blog posts and comments since October 11th right up until today have been lost. The blog was hacked a few hours ago, and it was being redirected to a site in the Middle East. I’ve no idea why.

Anyway, I’ve managed to get (withe the prompt help of the good people at Bluehost) everything restored since the last backup. It turns out that I thought i had more regular backups enabled, but it was not set properly.

I’m going to have to rebuild a number of customization elements of the blog to make it compatible with the newer (and supposedly more secure) version of the blog software I am running, and so the site might look a bit weird for a while until I complete that.

In the meantime, I need to see if I can find some way to get those old posts back and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Correlations

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Some big news:

wired science bannerAs I said in the previous post, there’s more to the new WIRED Science TV show on PBS than just the TV show. The website is going to be full of quite a lot of additional material, starting next Wednesday. There’ll be show episodes, extensions of some of the segments, extra links to expand upon the stories, materials for schools, and so forth. But there’s also something else in the works. There’ll be a dedicated blog for the show, and it is called “Correlations”.

Correlations is a new group science blog, with bloggers of a range of interests. It will be connected to the show in many ways, but will expand well beyond the show into aspects of science and technology of all sorts, according to the tastes of the bloggers involved. There’ll be all sorts of interesting material, from serious stuff to fun stuff, and points in between. I think that it’s a great combination of bloggers (the team was assembled by Leighton Woodhouse, of KCET – we had a great conversation about the whole business of science blogging and science bloggers back during the Summer) and I’m quite excited to see how it goes. Who are they? Well, here’s the list:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

One!

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first anniversary sketchOne year ago today, I did the Welcome post on this blog. It is Asymptotia’s first birthday anniversary!

It has been a very enjoyable year of blogging here, and sharing the company of so many of you who visit occasionally or regularly to read, and perhaps share a thought, joke, an idea, or an anecdote. This sort of blog, with its wide (and perhaps odd) selection of topics, from the fun to the serious, the trivial to the profound (well, I’m still working up to a profound post!), the light to the heavy, and the local to the global, is not to everyone’s tastes, and that suits me fine.

It’s just been great to have the freedom to pick and choose topics as I please, knowing that you in turn will come and go as you please and use the scroll bar as much as you see fit. It’s an excellent arrangement.

If you have been coming back for more, then it must suit you to some extent too, so that’s great. Thanks for your readership, participation, and support. In case you’ve […] Click to continue reading this post →

Location, Location, Location

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Some interesting news about the outreach mission. From time to time, Asymptotia posts get picked up by some of the local blogs of note, such as LA Observed, and that’s just great, since many things I talk about here are right at the intersection of local interest and the arts and sciences, especially education (such as talking in a local school), events such as the Categorically Not! ones at Santa Monica Airport, and issues such as the environment, in addition to the pure fun stuff, and the tasty stuff. For example, Kevin Roderick at LA Observed was kind enough to mention the posts about the Griffith Observatory (the new relaunch, and the controversy about the use of actors in the planetarium show), judging at the Science Fair at the California Science Center, as well as the post on the open day at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the post about cycling in the city (perhaps in combination with public transportation, as an alternative to blindly using your car/SUV for most journeys.)

Well, I was pleased to get an email a few days ago telling me that Outside.In have added added Asymptotia to their list of LA neighbourhood blogs, and the posts will be scanned for local references, and then added to a location map of all blogs posts. So what happens is that you can look at a neighbourhood in Outside.In (I tailored the previous link to 90089, the zip that USC is in, for example) and see marks on a map where blog posts have pointed to, or lists of posts that pertain to a particular zip code or neighbourhood. You can then follow those marks back to the blog posts! It’s very cool indeed. This will work for your neighbourhood too, where ever you are (in the USA) – just put in your zip code.

Each blog in the system also has their own page, and the one for Asymptotia is here. You should go to it to experiment with the clickability, but I also took a screen shot (since I can’t see how to live-embed the map), and so this is it earlier:

outside in blogging map

So far it seems a bit inconsistent with picking things up and I don’t know why, – it might […] Click to continue reading this post →

Backreacting Asymptotically

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(Random title constructed to reply to Bee’s post called Asymptotic Backreaction.)

You know, I’ve made some great online friends here on this blog. It’s all the result of that community I’m trying to keep going (and expand) here with contributions to the conversation from many of you in the comments, and even sometimes in guest posts. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of these new friends since everyone likes to pass through Los Angeles sooner or later. In the past six months, four familiar Asymptotia contributors have passed through Los Angeles and I’ve been lucky and delighted to meet them: – Amara (November; on her way to a conference, and she gave us a talk – I’m trying to get her to do a guest post on her “Watering the Earth” topic one day), Candace (January; on her way to a conference here -she did a guest post) by the way, Athena (two weeks ago, on the way to a conference), and this week I finally met Bee (also giving a talk, and on her travels -she’s also done a guest post by the way) who turns out to have just that same excellent eye for observation, and quietly sharp sense of humour, as her blog posts. (She’s the main blogger behind the excellent Backreaction, and she’s done a post there which briefly mentions her visit to Disney Concert Hall with me.)

Anyway, in the photo below is Bee (click for larger), at Grand Central Market (inserted into a photo taken near one you saw earlier. See also this post.):

Sabine Hossenfelder at Grand Central Market

Tameem, a student of mine, has teased me a bit about my showing visitors around, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Snap Links

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New feature. This one is being tested since I’m not really sure whether I like it or not:

If you hover over any external link in a post, you’ll see something interesting happen. Try it. Here is a link to the USC website, for example.

I am trying to decide if this is a useful feature or not. Perhaps it is just too annoying compared to the gain in functionality? Or perhaps you don’t care either way since you […] Click to continue reading this post →

Happy New Year!

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I’d like to wish a Happy and Successful New Year to all readers, whether you be regular, occasional or first time visitors! In a very short time, you’ve all helped make this blog into a pleasant, informative, and fun place to visit (certainly for me).

succulent starbursts

I’d hoped that this could be -and it has indeed become, with your help- a place that […] Click to continue reading this post →