The Homely Scientist

I know, I know. Let me have it. I said I would do my best to write for HomelyScientist and what did I do? I promptly went a got a new job, moved 1000 miles east and basically changed every single aspect of my life that a person can possibly change.

During the last month or two, it’s taken every spare nanosecond to keep relatively currently on AstronomyBuff, and even then I came up short for a few posts. As a result, I’ve had to lower the priority of writing on this blog.

Well, no more. Things have settled enough that I can get into a regular blogging groove and pick things up here.

A few bits of news: I’m working at the University of Illinois on The Dark Energy Survey, an effort to try and characterize nature of dark energy. Note that we’re not trying to find it, because we can’t interact with it directly, but we going to try and measure a variety of aspects of the universe to try and determine how MUCH dark energy there is and whether it’s always been this amount throughout the history of the universe.

It’s an incredibly interesting problem, one I am very excited and privileged to be a part of.

I’ll write about this effort mostly on astronomybuff, but I wanted to let HomelyScientist readers what I’ve been up to and to let you know that I’ll be tending to things a little more around here.

Thanks for your patience and lets get started…

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Okay, now that my initial feelings of weirdness have passed and I’m feeling a little more comfortable in someone else’s house, I guess I should introduce myself.

My name is Tony Darnell and I’m going to be your new blogger. As you may or may not know, Tris has moved on to other opportunities and I’ve offered to carry on this blog.

I’ve been blogging on AstronomyBuff since January, and one of the reasons I decided to blog for b5Media was I really enjoyed this blog. I felt like it was well-written and cared for, and it had a theme I’m very passionate about: doing science at home.

I want to continue what Tris has built, but of course, I’ll bring my own style to it.

I’m not sure what kind of readership this blog has, but I can tell you that I’m looking forward to learning more about you. I hope you’ll get involved and comment or ask questions. I’ll help out by giving you things to comment and ask questions about.

Some things you should know about me:

• I’m a little strange. People either find that endearing or annoying. I hope you’re in the former group, if not, you’re still welcome here.
• As you can see from my picture, I’m 50 feet tall and have a super-human intellect and strength.
• I’m a contrarian, I tend to resist doing things most people are doing.
• I love science, particularly astronomy.
• I ran a non-profit in the early 1990’s that gave science enrichment in the classroom. I’ll be drawing on that experience a lot when writing for this blog.
• I’m homeschooling my son in science this year. One of the main reasons I thought I could write for HomelyScientist was that I plan to chronicle that experience here.
• I know lots about science fairs and being a science fair judge. Again, you’ll read about that stuff here.

A bit about my writing style. I tend to write how I talk, which sometimes includes bad words. I’ve not bothered to censor myself on AstronomyBuff because I wanted that blog to accurately reflect my personality. I tend to write more towards entertaining than informing, although I realize that you need information, so I work hard to meld the two.

Since I think this blog was intended more for the home and family audience, I will make every attempt to keep it clean here. No bad words, and no long rants unless it’s also kept civil. This may change though as I get to learn more about you and get feedback on what you’re finding useful and what you’d like to get from this blog.

I’ll close this post by offering that you PLEASE feel free to interact and let me know what you want. If you don’t tell me then I’m gonna do what I want, and it may not be what YOU want. So chime in!

Alrighty then, let’s do some science, shall we?

Technorati Tags: homeschooling, homeschooling science, science blogging

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<Knock on door>

“Hello?”

<Tentatively crack open door and press my face between the door and the frame>

“Hello? Is anyone home? I’m Tony, the new blogger, I’m just gonna put my stuff in this corner, OK?”

<Open door all the way and walk in>

This is so strange.

I mean it, this is weird. Logging into and then posting on someone else’s blog that has been cared for and written on for years…

Well, the only thing I can tell you is that I feel like I’m wearing a pair of pants that I knew someone just died in.

Tris is fine, of course, that’s just a figure of speech, he went on to other, presumably greener pastures, but I can’t help but feel strange writing THIS post on THIS blog.

It’s like I’ve just moved into a house and I can see where the previous tenants put their couch from the indentations in the carpet. The picture hangers are still on the walls and, oh yeah, there’s still a roll of toilet paper on the holder by the toilet.

Strange.

I’m gonna need a minute, I’ll be right back…

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