Hanging out with "My Microbes and Me"

My partner got invited to present at Beakerhead with a team of science communicators from the University of Calgary. I got to tag along and it was a really fun day.

My Microbes and Me was a chance for people to see what their microbes looked like either by taking a culture from somewhere on their body or by swabbing their cheeks and getting to look at those swabs under a microscope. The cultures were tagged with an anonymous number and people can go look at their swabs after a few days by going to a site and finding their tag.

It was a lot of fun and I was really glad to get to hang out with a great group of science educators and the kick-ass grad students who helped make it all happen.

Things I learned (or relearned) at BeakerHead:

• The bacteria on you feed tend to grow best at a lower temperature than other parts of your body so they need a special growth medium.
• Microscopy is really fun.
• The university could probably use a really robust set of lending technology which includes an audience setup for a microscope.
• I’m not great at putting parafilm on petri dishes.
• I like organising events and managing the back of stage stuff.
• I struggle a bit with the speaking up to do the communicating.
• Standing for six hours kinda took it out of me and it really is time to get some strength and stamina back.

Since then I've been thinking about what I could share at a Beakerhead setup and I think there are a lot of fun collaborative AI projects (what if instead of the an LLM picking a word, what if people build up the model) and also some art (there are some old swarmart projects I'd love to revisit and play with further).

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (154)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos, we freeze the rain, celebrate feathered friends and begin at (almost) the very beginning.

• Did you ever want to watch rain drops hold still? Destin from Smarter Every Day brings you your dreams with a syringe and a slotted spoon. 
• Next, Norman Caruso, The Gaming Historian takes a break to tell you his 10 favourite birds in video games, because ... well, don't *you* have 10 favourite birds in video games? (I think my number one is Sage Joch)
• Finally Dave Bulmer brings you not the beginning, but the beginning of the bit at the beginning of the beginning but just after the beginning of the beginning. By which I mean he's talking about the beginning of the Prolog of The Way of Kings (by Brandon Sanderson). Dave already talked about why he's talking about the Stormlight Archive in an even earlier beginning.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 129)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we pull out or magnets, bang our air drums and then try to catch them all.

• First, on Sixty Symbols, Professor Phil Moriarty shows off the fun you can have with a slow motion camera, a strong magnet and some ferrofluid.
• Next, Hank Fucking Loves Science. (There's also a clean version if you need one.)
• Finally, Michael from Belated Media invites Alex and Kellz from The Dex to talk about Pokemon: The First Movie.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 117)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we get out our sciencing tools and get our feet wet.

• From Sixty Symbols we see what happens when physicists decide they want to do something interesting on a Friday afternoon. The science is interesting, and the visuals are awesome, though I have to confess to some jealousy since if I go outside on a Friday afternoon I'm probably goofing off.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 105)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we find out how the world works and then choose to ignore it anyway.

• First Henry from MinutePhysics and Derek from Veritasium team up to explain what's really going on with magnets. 
• And then, Mr. Smooth McGroove defies all laws of physics to bring us the sounds of Sonic speeding across a glacier.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 103)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we have to move, have to run and have to sing!

• First, on Periodic Videos we watch as Prof. Poliakoff prepares to leave one of the labs his group has used for a very long time. As a person who gets very attached to places and things I understand his feelings. Even when it's the right thing to do sometimes moving on is hard.
• Next,  let Mr. Smooth McGroove pick up your spirits as he races to eat everything he can see.
• Finally,  because doing largely unrelated projects when you should be working on your thesis, is totally foreign to me *cough cough*, I'd like to present AcapellaScience singing about String Theory to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody. 

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 84)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we save the world (twice!), look at how to make a movie look great forever and then we burn things in the coolest way.

• First, we have SuperJeenius's Let's Plays of Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.
  
  I'm not sure I made it clear ever, but this series of blog posts is based on all of the videos I've favourited and sometimes me-from-the-past seems set to make my job harder. This volume has been one of the problems where that's been the case. I found a bunch of videos in the list and I don't know why I liked them, so a lot of them got tossed. Then I had Episode 37 of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, which is interesting but makes no sense being halfway through the second game. So I don't know what me-from-the-past thought about this video or why it ended up in the favourites.
  
  I can say that both Let's Plays are very good and SuperJeenius's style makes a Let's Play very entertaining and engaging. So I'm going to throw the playlist for the first game in here and leave it up to you if you make it all the way to Episode 37 of the second game.
• Next, Adam Savage talks with Will on Still Untitled about the special effects on Blade Runner and why almost nothing else measures up.
• Finally, we get some slow motion action watching what happens when you drop embers into liquid oxygen, from Brady Haran and the team at Periodic Videos.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 83)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we look at the unexpected. Canada and the US don't have a straight border, and the barking dog actually bounces. Also we unexpectedly channel Hello Internet.

• First C.G.P. Grey, has an interested in weird boarders and even though it seems simple, the Canada-US boarder is a weird one. 
• Next Brady Haran has a video on Periodic Videos about one of the cooler demonstrations that they do at the University of Nottingham, the Barking Dog and how it doesn't work at all the way they thought it did. First we have the video itself then he shows the behind the scenes of how the video was made.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 80)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we get stron, get angry and then get calm.

• First, Mr. Smooth McGroove would like you to know about his strenth. His STRENTH. His SUPER HUMAN STRENTH. 
• Next, Hank Green is angry. Angry about 17 different things at the same time. So he takes four minutes to let us all know.
• Finally, Brady Haran does an experiment while walking out of the earth's atmosphere. His trip to Everest Base Camp offers a chance to illustrate how the boiling point of water drops as you go up in altitude (even if the Professor has some critiques on his technique). It also offers one of the most beautiful and calming views of our earth.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 44)

This volume of my favourite YouTube videos takes a look a two very important constants in the universe, mass, and love.

• First ZeFrank and Hank Green talk about the discovery of the Higgs Boson (and also spiral hotdogs).
• Next John Green talks about how John Green and John Green met and fell in love while playing for the Swindontown Swoodilypoopers. While this might seem confusing, just trust that John Green (one of them) knows how to tell a story.