A little while back I participated in the "dot astronomy" conference; a new meeting designed to promote online astronomy. It was held in Cardiff, and oh, Doctor, how I wish I could have attended in person! But instead I skyped into the meeting and gave my 20 minute presentation on being an all-powerful blogger, capable of crushing worlds beneath me.
Or I just talked about how to set up a blog, and how it will soon dominate your life. The sound quality isn’t the best, but I think you can make out what I say. And I only ran 6 minutes long (including Q&A) so that’s pretty good, too. There are lots of other talks online (including Pamela Gay’s and Emily Lakdawalla’s), so you can spend lots of time learning about what astronomy you can do indoors and ethernetted.
Sadly, the resolution is too low to see how carefully I placed my copy of Death from the Skies! behind me. It’s just an orange blur. Sigh. What’s that? You’d like to see it better? Why, I’m glad you asked!
My thanks to Robert Simpson for getting this all set up and being patient with me.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I miss your live Q&A chats
October 11th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Could you record it locally aswell next time
October 11th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Phil, ask your publisher for a core-backed blowup (embiggened!) of the cover so you can have one behind you for your various webcasts. If they don’t care to FedEx one to you, ask for a pdf of the cover that you can then send to your local printer and have it done yourself. It’s not pricey, and it will boost sales. They should have sent one to you already, knowing your all-powerful bloggerness.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
LOL you and that bloody book, i see images of it when i close my eyes, you have almost convinced me to buy it.
As my fellow daniel has said above ^^^^^^ I miss your question and answer chats too!
All the best.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
That was really inspirational.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Why does Amazon have Death being released on the 16th?
October 11th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Whattaya mean traffic goes down when you have hardcore astronomy topix! Gaak!
I can’t get enough of it! Bring it on!
Rich in Charlottesville
October 11th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
That reminds me — your radio show/podcast with PZ from 2 days ago is still in my to-listen queue. (I know, I know, it’s only 30 min.)
And OT for this thread, but Lord British launches w/ Expedition 18 in T - 1h41m:
www.richardinspace.com & live on NASA TV (@ 2AM EDT)
October 12th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Sigh… I want a copy really bad… but having just been laid off/downsized during the beginning stages of an ‘economic crisis’ it will have to wait until my revenue looks a bit more stable. Ah well… I still have Robert Hazen’s “Gen•e•sis” to finish anyway.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:30 am
How about a return of the Q&A sessions but not every week as they may tend to get a bit repetitive if they occur that frequently. How about every fifth Sunday of the month with perhaps some bonus sessions (especially if certain events come up). I think a first post-DEATH session should happen next month.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:55 am
NickBob said: Phil, ask your publisher for a core-backed blowup (embiggened!) of the cover
He just need to sit in front of a blue green-screen (or is it a green blue-screen..?) and he can use a normal scanned book cover as background.
October 12th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hey Dr.Phil, I already preordered a copy of your book! Interesting fact: The original ‘Bad Astronomy’ book was the first purchase I ever made over the internet.
October 12th, 2008 at 2:16 am
PLEASE can we have a return to the Sunday night chats? As Tim G says they needn’t be EVERY week. I’d settle for once a month. PLEASE? I miss ‘em so!
October 12th, 2008 at 2:52 am
If I buy your book, will you stop going on about it?
October 12th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Heh heh…product placement. : )
When I was promoting a book a while back, I had a local newspaper interview all set up and “decorated” my office in similar fashion. When the snotty photographer saw the strategically placed “prop” behind my desk, he asked that we move the shoot to another room. Fine, I said, and moved him to the living room…where I had several copies prominently stacked on the coffee table. They were even more prominently framed in the resulting photo. So there.
Nothing wrong with hyping the goods….
October 12th, 2008 at 9:15 am
That Cardiff meeting sounds like it would have been fun to attend — I wish I’d known about it? Or was it limited registration? I’ve been blogging about astronomy since before there were blogs… it would have been fun to share my experiences, too.
Cool video though…
It would be interesting to see more “virtual” presentations at astro meetings… some of us on the AAS ConCom committee talked about it extensively last year…
October 12th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Oh, and I hear ya about it dominating your life… every time I get a press release about astronomy I sit and think about if it would make a good blog entry, or documentary script topic, or what?
Writing is easily done, it’s the thought and creativity that takes time.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Nice one Phil, although it seems as if you didn’t have eyebrows ^^
October 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Nicolas, I wasn’t going to say anything about that… I just figured Phil was playing with a new “look”….
October 12th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Ey oop - I see Ed Gomez was involved in the conference. I was on the same BSc Astrophysics course as him in Cardiff way back in 1998! Nice chap.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Any reason for shaving your eyebrows?
October 13th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Golly, you sure look mean, in that photograph. Is that the look I get, for putting your book on my wish list?
October 13th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Phil Plait, people here keep going on about your lack of eyebrows. Maybe you should borrow Mrs. BA’s eyebrow pencil.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Hi Phil! What happened to your glasses? Or have you dumped them for contact lenses?
I can’t help myself, but this new look of yours is something I have to get used too.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Perhaps there’s no new look and it’s just the terrible compression
October 13th, 2008 at 7:40 am
(video compression I mean off course)