EuroTrip '08
clock | April 19, 2008Last night, Derek Law and I were taped for about 15 minutes for Radio3, about Open Access and the world of publishing:
clock | April 19, 2008Yesterday afternoon, Sely Costa and Derek Law did a fun session, where she pretended to be an unconcerned citizen and he tried to persuade her that OA is a good thing. It was a fun way to demonstrate how OA benefits everyone, not just researchers.
clock | April 18, 2008One of the highlights of the visit to Trieste was the opportunity to finally meet an old blog-friend of mine. Franc Nekrep is a professor of Mikrobiology in Ljubljana, Slovenia and we have been reading each others blogs for a couple of years now. It was so much fun to finally meet in person. He came to the Open Access session and then we went out for lunch and had a great time. Check his blogs (as much as you can understand Slovenian): MIKROB(io)LOG and LiLoLe:
Oh, and for my foodblogging friends who would chastise me if I missed posting pictures of the food we had, here they are -…
clock | April 18, 2008Here are, quickly for now, some pictures from the yesterday's panel "Open Access; let's do it: top down, bottom up or both?" Stevan Harnad did his presentation first via Skype (from Montreal) which was, unfortunately, not recorded. The rest of the session was recorded and at some time in the future will become available online - I will let you know when this happens.
Since most of the panel discussed institutional library repositories, I felt I needed to focus entirely on the "other Open Access", i.e., the OA journals, especially PLoS. More later....(also it seems that the wifi at the hotel…
clock | April 18, 2008It's nice to get to know your fellow panelists REALLY well over a dinner and wine the night before the event. So we got together and had great fun: Sely Costa from Brasil, A.R.D. Prasad from India, Derek Law and his wife from Scotland, Stefania from Italy and myself.
Warning - marine biology bloggers should not look under the fold.
Warning 2 - those offended by the idea that a Kinder-egg contains a winged Barbie look-alike as a toy should not look under the fold. Also, do not try to imagine the double- and triple-entendres and innuendo as I was trying to put her together and find the…
clock | April 18, 2008Trieste at night. Smell of the Adriatic sea, in which I learned to swim some decades ago, just two towns (and two border crossings) away from here. Ponte Rossa, where I got my first jeans, back in 1970 or so. Nostalgia.
clock | April 17, 2008Professor Steve Steve went to FEST with me today and saw some impostors that came all the way from China, some nice FEST employees (good - I realized I did not do enough teasing of Mrs.Coturnix by posting pictures of beautiful people of the XY karyotype lately), cool Italian science journalists and bloggers like Elisabetta Tola and Marco Boscollo, and had a real Italian pizza for lunch:
clock | April 16, 2008The entire thing is happening in a large building on a pier (Molo IV). I was impressed by the crowds on the first day. I also got vouchers for four nice restaurants in town for meals. Last night I went to a nice pizza place and had spaghetti with tomato&eggplant sauce and veal in wine sauce - delicious: real Italian food! Tonight, I will also be interviewed for the radio - there will be a podcast online so I will link to it later. Pictures under the fold:
clock | April 16, 2008Today is the second day of the Science FEST in Trieste. Yesterday, I went around, looked at everything and took a lot of pictures (under the fold). Later today, I will see some more specific sessions and will let you know more about the whole thing. The main focus are science books - thousands of books, from highly technical to popular, from books for children, to old historical books. And around that wealth of books, they built an interesting program of events, demonstrations, movies, plays, panels, hands-on exploration for kids, etc.
clock | April 15, 2008Yesterday was my last day in Cambridge, so here are some pictures from the PLoS office - Chief Editor Mark Patterson and the new Managing Editor of PLoS ONE Peter Binfield (and the beer pictures are under the fold):
And I am glad that Andrew Walkinshaw could come and join us as well - we first met at Scifoo last year:
clock | April 14, 2008The weekend at La Maison de Girrafes was absolutely brilliant. Henry and I could not stop talking for two straight days. We tried to elicit the End Of The Universe by starting a cycle of infinite regress by repeatedly linking to each other's blog posts, but something went wrong with our plan and, voila, you are all still alive and well, I see.
Every time we walked out, the Sun started shining. As soon as we would go back inside, it would get dark and start storming, raining and hailing. Thus, the opportunities to take pictures of the entire menagerie were rare and brief, and I missed them…
clock | April 13, 2008These two entire days chez Gee, surrounded by many strange animals, I kept looking for the girrafes and they were nowhere to be seen. But now I know why - they are not allowed in here any more, at least not beyond this point:
clock | April 13, 2008It was a wonderful day this morning so the entire Gee family (including the dog) got in a car and went out to Holkham beach for a little walk, then to the Stiffkey Red Lion for lunch....
clock | April 12, 2008Henry and I took Heidi the dog on a long walk around Cromer and East Runton, enjoying the scenery....
Cromer:
More under the fold...
The church in Cromer is waaaaaay too big:
Cromer crabs, on the pier:
The beach - the rocks on the beach are from late Cretacious, while the cliffs surrounding it are from Pleistocene:
Heidi loves to dig in the sand:
Henry's beach house:
About noon, we got tired and hungry, so we ate at a Bistro where dogs are allowed:
On the walk back, we passed through East Runton:
And hidden in the woods, is this memento of the most famous event in Cromer…
clock | April 12, 2008Now I know where Henry got the name for his blog - Cromer is the only place in the UK with a pier that has a theater on its end:
More under the fold: