AndrewBarna.org

So it was my birthday on Monday and with the connectedness of the facebook (and because it tells people when other people’s birthdays are) people like to wish other people “Happy birthday” by writing on their wall. Curious as to how different that flurry of activity is from normal days, I plotted up some numbers:

As you can see most of the posts are on my birthday. In fact, the number of posts is larger than the statistical allowance for normal by almost 10 times. Just something to think about. Though I didn’t actually run the numbers, the percentage of friends who posted was about 20%, not bad I guess.

I fly back to Hawaii on Monday!
-Andrew

There is something green in the waters off Scripps!

As you can see, there might be an algal bloom happening right off the coast. One of the more awesome parts of working at Scripps is that I am surround by all manner of marine biologists and oceanographers, so when something strange happens the whole community discusses it. It wasn’t long before an email was sent to everyone at SIO asking what the “green in the water” was. Replies came quickly, the most informative was from SCCOOS:

The harmless, green foam that invaded Orange and LA County beaches in late July has extended down to San Diego County. Last week, researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography also found Tetraselmis, a microscopic green algae, in samples from Scripps Pier. The foam has persisted this week, though it’s patchy distribution make it visible only at some beaches and the foam becomes more apparent in the afternoon when the wind and waves mix the surface waters. This green flagellate which is only 10 micrometers in size has been found in concentrations as dense as 15 million cells per liter of seawater. There are no documented health hazards with swimming or fishing in areas of Tetraselmis blooms.
- http://www.sccoos.org/data/habs/news.php

So the good news is, it won’t hurt you, the bad news is, it looks kinda gross.
-Andrew

While there is not much to talk about regarding what I’m doing at Scripps, I’ve mostly been doing various programing tasks and some html work (which can hardly be called ‘programing’). I’m also likely to go on another oceanographic cruise out of Hawai for two weeks or so, more on that when it gets closer though (January of 2011).

The real interesting thing about San Diego right now is how cold it has been for the past month. While the rest of the country has been hot hot hot, San Diego just barely gets above 20°C. It has been cloudy and overcast almost all day around the office I work in and I have been needing to wear my HPU sweater (got to represent!). Not only has it been cold, we had coldest July in 77 years. Just so you understand how ‘big’ this is, it was front page news in the local paper. Outside of work I’ve had some cooking adventures that I will post about soon.

-Andrew