SLU Park

The South Lake Union Neighborhood is going to be a really nice place to work and live one of these days. Between the streetcar to connect us to downtown, and all of the (expensive) little cafes that are popping up for lunch, it might soon feel less like an industrial area and more like a multi-use neighborhood. Also in the works is a nice park at the southern tip of Lake Union. We can see them putting in the seawall now. It is nice to go over there for lunch even before the facelift - this should be a hoot once it's finished. Someone else will have to let me know about it. Hopefully, I will be long gone from the lab by the time this is done!

Here's the grand plan:

iPod? No Thanks, I'm Trying to Quit

got headphones?

After my previous post, I donned my recording studio styled headphones to crank through some rock assisted image analysis. I paused to consider the role of earphones in scientific labs. I wear earphones in the lab on three occasions: (1) image analysis, (2) to listen to the Pitt Panthers or (3) to signal to other people that I am not to be bothered. I plug in to my desktop compy, though. I haven't quite mastered the MP3/podcast thing yet. (Maybe I don't want to???)


My lab is an iPod lab. All of my grad student colleagues have one, and many listen while they work. I wonder if they have sinister motives (see #3 above). My deal is that if I am doing anything that involves words or numbers, I cannot listen to music. Senor brain just doesn't work that way. So that rules out tunes while I follow protocols, have conversations or write. It's inappropriate to transfer my own learning style on others, but I can't help but recall the good points about lab culture from a critique of lab life in the iPod era.


It's kind of funny that I am writing this, since my grad student pals will probably read it at some time... I just wonder if my tendency to work ideas over in conversation with someone else might benefit from a culture less connected to media and more connected to other people.

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UPDATE: A fellow blogger made a nearly simultaneous entry on the effect ipods in society, but in a different context. Go figure that some state legislator wants to limit use of iPods by pedestrians in New York City.

morning reflections

This morning I came into work really early. It is nice to sit in the lab, read a journal article, feed the cells and hammer out a plan for the day before anyone else shows up. Watching the low level wisps of grey get pushed aside by western periwinkle over Lake Union is an added bonus.

The serenity of the lab in the morning is really nice, so I got to wondering about why I cannot be this productive the rest of the day. Maybe it's that no one is around to come ask a question (or for me to ask a question of); perhaps it's that I really am a morning person. I bet it has something to do with the fact that I do not receive emails in the AM. It's not like our lab ever gets particularly loud or busy.

Hmmmm...