Jimmy 2.0: Moving On

With the advent of my next academic step (University of Maryland's PhD Program in Microbiology) it is time for Mason Tech Beat to transform into something less Masony and more sciency. For that reason....(drum roll)....I've registered:

scienceismagic.com

It combines my love of science with my newer love of the magical arts! Also, it sounds kinda nifty too.

If you go there now (as of this posting) it will probably just be a parking page, but eventually I should have a wordpress blog up and running. I will probably just leave all these articles over here so they don't lose their value and break links, but eventually you'll see a big "go here instead" link on the top post of this blog.

Thanks to all my readers, whoever you are, and I hope you'll follow me over to the new blog as soon as it's ready to rock and roll!

Swine Flu is the Talk of the Town!

Today I published two new articles for Yan over at Geeks Are Sexy. Both of them were on the potential swine flu epidemic. It's been all over the news so I figured it would be a great new installment of my "Science is Sexy" series (playing off the GAS name).

• Science is Sexy: What is Swine Flu? How Does an Animal Disease Spread to a Human Host?
• Track the Swine Flu Outbreaks on Google Maps

Both of these articles went up today, but the first one actually got picked up by Neatorama, a notable blog in the top 15,000 sites on the internet (according to Alexa anyway). I love getting my stories promoted to impressive front pages and on my 4th day back, give or take, this is a great start!

*Also, by the time you read this I'll probably have recieved my 300th follower on Twitter! :)

Back from Hiatus?

Hey, so it's been a little bit but I'll try to make this update short, simply because it's the SECOND ONE IN A ROW!!!

Essentially I've been super busy working on school and furthering my magic hobby. Nothing terribly interesting has happened to me other than the few I'll list here:

• First off, I got into the Microbiology PhD program at the University of Maryland - College Park. I'll be taking classes, teaching classes, and working in a lab...all at the same time when I enroll in the Fall. It's gonna be a 4.5-5.5 year process so wish me luck!
• I just attended Magi-Whirl, which is a conference for magicians in the DC area. It was FANTASTIC and one of the lecturers (and the headliner) was Jeff McBride, who is a wonderful magician and all-around great guy. They're already advertising for next year, if you're also into magic (and the show for the public was AWESOME too, so bring your mom!).
• That's about it I guess...

I just wrote my first freelance blog post in a long while, so if you want to see if your ideas about cancer are correct, head on over to GeeksAreSexy.net and read about the cure for cancer. You'll even get a link to one of my favorite webcomics...