Flipboard

My iPhone recently came back from repair and I took the opportunity to check out some new apps. Somehow I stumbled upon Flipboard and I've been using it a lot since the download. In case you haven't tried it yet - you should!

Flipboard is a "social magazine" that allows you to choose and sort all kinds of news feeds. This is a screen shot from my own flipboard.
I've selected my twitter feed and a broad selection of "sciency" and geeky stuff, along with the occasional newspaper. This is great way to make your interests more accessible. It's easy to use and looks cool, and that's about what I'm going to say - just try it.

I spent a lot of time flipping around my flipboard today as I was stuck in a hopelessly time-wasting lecture -if you can call it a lecture when the prof reads aloud slides that are copy-paste from the book. I couldn't get myself to run off in the breaks (what if he suddenly said something important?) so I ended up with Flipboard. Pure luck!

In the end I used the lecture to read a blog post at Respectful Insolence (part of Scienceblogs) called Preclinical research has a problem, but that doesn't mean religion is better. I don't have time to say much about it in this post, but if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do. It made all the time I wasted on that lecture well worth it - and I never would have found it without Flipboard.

The magical concept of free food

As a student you don't have a lot of money and the least thing you like to spend your money on is food. This also include coffee and all kinds of cold beverages.

Therefore universities and all companies that ever has anything to do with any type of students, knows that by offering free food the number of students attending their event more than triples. Trondheim is a small city that is strongly and wholeheartedly dedicated to engineers. Regardless of what field they are "engineering" the whole city with all it's companies, love to arrange various (career related) events for them.

While the numerous engineers attend these events to talk to all the business people, we who are not engineers attend to collect freebies - and food. It's amazing how much snacks, cake, drinks and pizza you can collect over the year without being an engineer of any kind. And even better, it makes you feel awesome.
The sense of greatness, accomplishment and general "I rule the world"-feeling after getting hold of something free and consumable is a defining property of biology students at NTNU.

By the way, I got some apple pie and a pepsi today. That's right. I'm the best. Ever!!

All the things I want to study

I'm a cell biologist. I work with secondary metabolites from Arabidopsis that has potential in chemotherapy. But I must confess, I love marine biology. And microbiology. Especially marine microbiology. Not to mention taxonomy, evolution, immunology and archea.

Acetabularia  mediterranea (wikipedia).   

Every now and then I realize that I need to quit my masters degree and study something completely different. Like the algae Acetabularia. This algae is about 0.5 to 10 cm tall and consists of a rhizoid, a stem and an umbrella-like cap on the top. Here's the awesome part: the whole thing is made up of a single cell.
1 cell!!!
The whole thing is only one cell, with one nuclei. I'm sorry to ditch you Volvox, but this is just so much cooler!
Anyone want to fund my research on Acetabularia?


 - don't tell my supervisor...

Time sparing or time consuming gadgets?

If you don't consider how rarely I've been blogging lately, it's clear that I love gadgets. I have an android phone, iPhone, Kindle and a Nook that I use more like a tablet. I think Android's way better than Apple (sorry if I offend you) because of the possibility to use widgets, but I also find that Apples solutions often function better.

I sent my iPhone to get its power button repaired and is facing a few days without a phone. No problem. I have my tablet and computer. At all times I can find whatever information I want and I'm still constantly available - I have skype, email, Facebook and Twitter. This need to always be available makes me want to check both emails, Facebook or Twitter all the time. Just in case someone has something important to say. Or in case someone want's to meet for coffee. Or in case... it goes on.

Needless to say, this is a waste of time. Imagine being able to sit down at your desk and NOT feel the urge to respond immediately to every email, but instead fall deeply into whatever article your'e reading (or writing).

Gadgets for work...
In addition to using technology for ..."social purposes", I'm also very interested in using it for more practical work, like planning my studies, keeping track of my experiments and lab work and have easy access to all my protocols -and preferably also results- at all times. In addition, I need to share most of this stuff with my supervisor.
It's not easy to find the right tools for these problems.

I usually use my Google calendar for planning, but I haven't found a very good mobile app for it. The one on iPhone is useless with no easy or functional way of importing several calendars. In the end, a lot of plans are just made i Excel and shared with my supervisor on Dropbox (Dropbox never fails!).
I've looked at a few lab work planning options, but they all require some "getting into it", which there never seems to be time to do. In the moment a piece of paper is just so much quicker.

The one thing that always works is Evernote. I use it for planning my week, because of the easy synchronizing all my plans are everywhere at all times. I also use it for my study notes, results and "to do lists" for the same reason.

...and for all the time spent on the couch
I LIKE my Kindle. I can't imagine anyone that don't like Kindle. I read Game of Thrones (that I LOVE) on my Kindle. I read Superbug, A planet of viruses, Pride and predjudice and so on. And I like it!
What I don't like about my Kindle, is the absolutely, non-functional and stupid pdf-reader. I cannot read my articles on my Kindle. Baaad Kindle!
Then again, this is the non-work section, so never mind. Get back to Game of Thrones. Winter is coming.