This is what I get for reading my RSS feeds too late: today (as I still write this, barely) is Universe Today’s 10th anniversary!
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Wow. It’s not an exaggeration at all to say I owe pretty much everything to Fraser Cain, who started UT. He called me out of the blue back in 2000, talking about ways to help each other. He started an advertising network before websites had ads, really, and while it didn’t last long there was a month or two there where the extra money really helped. Fraser convinced me to start a newsletter (also urged by Jeff Golick, the editor on my first book) and also talked me into eventually turning it into a blog. I still remember the conversation we had when he had to twist my arm into writing more than one blog post a day. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
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Fraser and I have one rule, and when he’s trying to talk me into something, he always says, "What’s the rule?", and, wearily but resigned to the truth, I reply: "Fraser is always right."
Because he is. He was always right there, just ahead of the curve of the web, always giving me advice, always wanting to help both of us. When we merged our bulletin boards into the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today forum, he was the driving force, and the one who did almost all the work (I’m fairly useless with such things and probably would have somehow set fire to the forum if allowed to run around unsupervised). He started the Carnival of Space, now nearing the 100th episode. He started the Astronomy Cast podcast, and asked me to partner with him. I was swamped with work, and regretfully turned him down. But hey, I told him, I know this awesome astronomer named Pamela Gay who is looking to do an astronomy podcast; you should talk to her.
I’m glad I got to repay at least some of Fraser’s monumental help to me with that.
Holy crap! I just remembered that it was at Dragon*Con in 2006 when Fraser and I met George Hrab together, too. Wow. That’s where I met Derek and Swoopy in real life for the first time, too. Fraser’s been around for a lot of world-changing web-based events for me.
One of the hardest decisions I have ever made in my life was to move to Discover Magazine, because it meant I couldn’t do a lot of the stuff Fraser and I had always done together.
And yet we are still doing things together. We’ve gone to professional astronomy meetings and live-blogged them (and shared more than one hotel room together, too). He’s visited me IRL, and me him. We don’t chat nearly as often as I’d like, but we’re still there for each other.
Fraser, for everything you’ve done for me, well, thanks. Universe Today is a monster success, one of if not the biggest and best astronomy news sites on the web. It’s popular because it deserves to be, well-designed because Fraser wouldn’t have it any other way, and still a great read because he’s involved.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:01 am
I love the Astronomy Cast podcast. Congratulations on 10 years UT.
Slightly OT, but a sydney bloke has captured a picture of the shuttle and the ISS from his backyard in Sydney…
http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/vincents-sydney-shutter-snaps-shuttle-in-space-20090324-988l.html?page=-1
Amazing what you can do with a little telescope and a webcam.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Phil Plait: “This is what I get for reading my RSS feeds too late: today (as I still write this, barely) is Universe Today’s 10th anniversary!”
Yeah, Phil, looks like you “misunderestimated” the time!
March 24th, 2009 at 2:15 am
I’ll confess that I don’t read Universe Today regularly. Often if I read about a recent astronomical discovery somewhere else and I want more information, I’ll look on Universe Today to see if there’s an article on it, but it’s not on my list of routine places to visit in order to see what’s new.
The layout doesn’t help. I have to scroll down a page just to get to the beginning of a given article (i.e. past the ads), and that tends to put me off.
As for Astronomy Cast, in mid September last year I started listening to all the episodes in chronological order, and have almost caught up now. Will send the Astronomy Cast team an email when I have completely caught up (which won’t be long, as I listened to #123 just this afternoon).
March 24th, 2009 at 5:55 am
Is Dr. Plait going to comment about the following news item?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727518683&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
March 24th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Man, that was 2006… time really does fly!
Hopefully Frasier will be at Dragon*Con this year, of course, we didn’t have Pamela Gay there in 2006, but she has come back every year since. But Frasier never has come back! It is hard to have a ‘real’ live Astronomy Cast without both of them there.
But, Kevin Grazier has been a good replacement in a pinch.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Fraser Cain? Isn’t he that psychiatrist who used to be on TV?
March 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Gosh! 10 years, that web thing is sure getting old!
But hey, congrats, sciences and scientists never gets old – they rediscover themselves.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
congrats Fraser.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
This article is a good place to ask the question:
Howcum neither the old site nor the Discover blog ever mentions “Babylon 5″? (For those who have not seen B5, the connection is that “Universe Today” is a daily newspaper in the “Babylon 5″ story.)
March 25th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
That is so not what I pictured Fraser looking like.
He sounds younger (and thinner). Possibly less hairy, too.